BIOMtD 

HIST.  Diy.l 

QH 

367 

H824D 

1909 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 

Mrs.  Frank  E.  Peabody 

for 

Dr.  Frank  E.  Peabody 
Memorial 


\ 


LA/  t 


ANNALS  N  .Y.  ACAD.  Sci. 


VOLUME   XIX,  PLATK  I. 


PLATE  I. 


BRONZE   BUST  OF  CHARLES   DARWIN. 

Presented  to  the  American  Museum  of   Natural    History 
By  the  New    York  Academy  of  Sciences, 
12  February,  1909. 


[ANNALS  N.  Y.  ACAD.  Set.,  VOL.  XIX,  No.  1,  Part  I,  pp.  1-40.     31  Ju\y,  1909.] 


OH 
34,7 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION., 

*   -  / 

BY  EDMUND  OTIS.HOVEY,  Q!L  . 
Recording  Secretary. 


By  invitation  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Sciences,  the  friends  of 
science  in  New  York  City  and  vicinity  gathered  at  the  American  Museum 
of  Natural  History  on  Friday,  12  February,  1909,  to  celebrate  the  centenary 
of  the  birth  of  the  great  English  naturalist,  Charles  Robert  Darwin,  and  the 
semi-centennial  anniversary  of  the  publication  of  his  epoch  making  book 
"The  Origin  of  Species."  In  preparation  for  the  celebration,  the  following 
circular  was  sent  out,  under  date  of  31  October,  1908,  to  the  members  of  the 
Academy  and  its  affiliated  societies  and  other  selected  addresses : 

The  investigations  and  publications  of  Charles  Darwin  have  had  a  profound 
influence  upon  the  progress  of  science  in  America  as  well  as  in  all  other  parts  of  the 
world,  but  no  important  memorial  of  this  great  naturalist  exists  in  this  country. 
The  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  Darwin's  birth  and  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the 
publication  of  the  "Origin  of  Species"  fall  within  the  year  1909,  and  the  Council  of 
the  New  York  Academy  of  Sciences  proposes  that  these  events  be  suitably  celebrated 
on  Darwin's  birthday,  12  February,  1909,  when  addresses  are  to  be  delivered  by 
members  of  the  Academy  setting  forth  Darwin's  achievements  in  different  depart- 
ments of  science,  and  a  bronze  bust  of  Darwin  is  to  be  unveiled  and  presented  to  the 
American  Museum  of  Natural  History  by  the  president  of  the  Academy  and  accepted 
by  the  president  of  the  Museum.  It  is  also  proposed  to  hold  in  connection  with  the 
celebration  an  exhibition  at  the  Museum  of  Darwiniana  and  objects  illustrating 
Darwin's  theory  of  evolution  through  natural  selection  and  his  work  in  botanical, 
zoological  and  geological  research. 

A  Darwin  Memorial  Committee  to  make  all  arrangements  has  been  appointed 
as  follows: 


E.  O.  Hovey,  Chairman 
J.  A.  Allen 

C.  W.  Beebe 
C.  L.  Bristol 
N.  L.  Britton 
H.  C.  Bumpus 
G.  N.  Calkins 
J.  McK.  Cattell 

F.  M.  Chapman 


C.  F.  Cox 
H.  E.  Crampton 
C.  B.  Davenport 
Bashford  Dean 
A.  W.  Grabau 
W.  T.  Hornaday 
M.  A.  Howe 
J.  F.  Kemp 
F.  A.  Lucas 
l 


W.  D.  Matthew 
T.  H.  Morgan 
H.  F.  Osborn 
H.  H.  Rusby 
W.  B.  Scott 
J.  J.  Stevenson 
C.  W.  Townsend 
W.  M.  Wheeler 
E.  B.  Wilson 


2  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

The  Council  considers  the  coming  celebration  a  fitting  occasion  -for  a  general 
expression  of  appreciation  of  Darwin's  life  and  work  and  therefore  invites  all  friends 
of  science  in  New  York  and  vicinity  to  join  in  the  proposed  commemoration  and  in 
erecting  a  suitable  tribute  to  Darwin's  memory  in  the  Natural  History  Museum,  the 
most  appropriate  place  in  this  metropolis.  ***** 

EDMUND  OTIS  HOVEY 

Secretary,  New  York  Academy  of  Sciencef 

West  77th  Street  and  Central  Park,  West 
CHARLES  F.  Cox 

PRESIDENT 
New  York,  31  October,  1908 

The  following  invitation  was  sent  out  to  the  members  of  the  American 
Museum  of  Natural  History,  the  New  York  Zoological  Society,  the  New 
York  Botanical  Garden  and  sister  scientific  societies  throughout  the  world, 
as  well  as  to  all  classes  of  members  of  the  Academy  and  its  affiliated  societies : 

The    New    York    Academy    of    Sciences 

invites  you  to  attend  its 
exercises  commemorating  the 

One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of 

Charles  Darwin 

and  the 

Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  the  Publication  of 
"  The  Origin  of  Species  " 


American  Museum  of  Natural  History 

Central  Park,  West,  and  Seventy-seventh  Strest 

February  the  twelfth,  nineteen  hundred  nine 

at  three  o'clock  p.  m. 

On  the  day  of  the  celebration,  the  committee  charged  by  the  Council 
with  making  arrangements  for  the  event  carried  out  the  following  programme : 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION 


Programme 


Presentation  to  the 

American  Museum  of  Natural  History 
of  a 

Bronze  Bust  of  Darwin 

By  CHARLES  FINNEY  Cox 
President  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Sciences 

Acceptance  on  behalf  of 
the  Trustees  of  the  Museum 

By  HENRY  FAIRFIELD  OSBORN 
President  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History 

Addresses 

DARWIN  AND  GEOLOGY 
BY  JOHN  JAMES  STEVEXSON 

DARWIN     AND     BOTANY 
BY  NATHANIEL  LORD  BRITTON 

DARWIN  AND  ZOOLOGY 
BY  HERMON  CAREY  BUMPUS 

In  the  course  of  the  exercises,  the  Recording  Secretary  read  greetings 
from  several  societies,  including  the  following  cablegram  from  Professor 
Arthur  E.  Shipley  of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  England: 

"Zoologists  dining  in  Darwin's  room,  Christ's,  send  greetings  to  the 
Academy." 

The  Committee  was  assisted  in  the  earning  out  of  its  plans  by  a  special 
fund  of  about  SI, 750.00,  the  subscribers  to  which  were 


ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 


Adler,  I. 

Allis,  Edward  Phelps,  Jr. 

Amend,  B.  J. 

Ansbacher,  Mrs.  A.  B. 

Arthur,  J.  C. 

Avery,  Samuel  P. 

Baekeland,  L.  H. 

Barren,  George  D. 

Baskerville,  Charles 

Baugh,  Miss  M.  L. 

Beckhard,  Martin 

Beller,  A. 

Bessey,  Charles  E. 

van  Beuren,  F.  T. 

Bijur,  Moses 

Birkhahn,  Robert  C. 

Brinsmade,  Charles  Lyman 

Bristol,  John  I.  D. 

Britton,  N.  L. 

Brown,  Addison 

Brown,  Edwin  H. 

Brown,  Joseph  E. 

Bumpus,  H.  C. 

Burgess,  T.  J.  W. 

Burroughs,  C.  W. 

Bush,  Wendell  T. 

Chamberlain,  Leander  T. 

Chubb,  S.  H. 

de  Coppet,  E.  J. 

Corning,  C.  R. 

Cox,  C.  F. 

Dahlgren,  B.  E. 

Davenport,  Charles  B. 

Davis,  William  Gilbert 

Davis,  William  T. 

Dean,  Bash  ford 

De  Witt,  William  G. 

Dinkelspiel,  Mrs.  PaulineJPrice 

Dodge,  Cleveland  H. 

Dodge,  Richard  E. 

Dominick,  George  F. 


Donald,  James  M. 
Doughty,  Mrs.  Alia 
Douglas,  James 
Dudley,  P.  H.  , 

Dundas,  Ralph  Wurts 
Dunn,  Gano 
Dwight,  Jonathan,  Jr. 
Earle,  F.  S. 

Emerson,  Miss  Julia  T. 
Emmet,  Miss  L.  F. 
Estabrook,  A.  F. 
Field,  William  B.  Osgood 
Ford,  James  B. 
de  Forest,  Robert  W. 
Frissell,  A.  S. 
Greer,  David  H. 
Godfrey,  Charles  C. 
Goodnow,  Henry  R. 
Goodwin,  A.  C. 
Greenwood,  Isaac  J. 
Gregory,  W.  K. 
Halsted,  Byron  D. 
Hammond,  J.  B. 
Haupt,  Louis 
Hazard,  R,  G. 
Herrman,  Mrs.  Esther 
Herter,  Christian  A. 
Hess,  Selmar 
Hewins,  Miss  Nellie  P. 
Hills,  Alfred  K. 
Holt,  Henry 
Hornaday,  W.  T. 
Hovey,  E.  O. 
Howe,  H.  M. 
Hubbard,  Walter  C. 
Huntington,  Archer  M. 
Hutter,  Karl 
Hyde,  Frederic  E. 
Isaacs,  Miss  Alice  M. 
Jones,  Dwight  A. 
Kane,  John  Innes 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION 


Kemp,  J.  F. 
Kennedy,  John  S. 
Kinney,  Morris 
Klein,  Edward  N.  E. 
Kraemer,  Henry 
Kunz,  George  F. 
Lang,  H. 
Langeloth,  J. 
Langmann,  G. 
Levy,  Miss  Daisy 
Liechtenstein,  Paul 
Lieb,  J.  W.,  Jr. 
Loeb,  Morris 
Lowie,  Robert  H. 
Lusk,  Graham 
Marble,  Manton 
Matthew,  W.  D. 
McMillin,  Emerson 
Meltzer,  S.  J. 
Milburn,  John  G. 
Miller,  George  N. 
Mills,  D.  O. 
Munn,  John  P. 
Nesbit,  Abram  G. 
Oettinger,  P.  J. 
Ogilvie,  Miss  Ida  H. 
Osborn,  Henry  F. 
Osborn,  William  Church 
Owens,  W.  W. 
Palm,  Charles 
Parsons,  John  E. 
Peckham,  S.  F. 
Pedersen,  Frederick  M. 
Petrunkevitch,  Alexander 
Pfordte,  O.  F. 


Phipps,  Henry 
Pumpelly,  Raphael 
Ramsperger,  Gustavus 
Riederer,  Ludwig 
Robb,  J.  Hampden 
Rusby,  H.  H. 
Russ,  Edward 
Sachs,  Paul  J. 
Sauter,  Fred. 
Schniewind,  F. 
Scrymser,  James  A. 
Senff,  Charles  H. 
Smith,  Mrs.  Annie  Merrill 
Smith,  E.  E. 
Stone,  Miss  Ellen  J. 
Strauss,  Frederick 
Streat,  James 
Tesla,  Nikola 
Thaw,  Benjimin 
Thompson,  Miss  Anna  F. 
Thorndike,  Edward  L. 
Thome,  Samuel 
Townsend,  C.  H. 
Tuckerman,  Alfred 
Tweedy,  Mrs.  A.  B. 
Van  Tassell,  F.  L. 
Walcott,  Charles  D. 
Walker,  James 
Warburg,  Paul  M. 
Weiss,  Mrs.  Samuel  W. 
White,  I.  C. 
Williams,  Henry  S. 
Wilson,  Edmund  B. 
Woodward,  R.  S. 


The  Academy  gratefully  acknowledges  the  cooperation  of  the  American 
Museum  of  Natural  History  in  making  the  exhibition  a  success.  The 
exhibition  was  held  from  12  February  to  14  March  inclusive  in  the  Synoptic 
Hall  (now  known  as  the  Darwin  Hall)  and  the  Hall  of  North  American 
Forestry  of  the  Natural  History  Museum,  and  it  consisted  of  letters,  writings 
and  portraits  of  Charles  Robert  Darwin,  and  exhibits  demonstrating  various 


6  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

aspects  of  the  process  of  evolution  of  the  human  species,  of  other  animals  and 
of  plants,  with  special  reference  to  the  Darwinian  principle  of  natural  selec- 
tion. The  exhibits  were  assembled  and  arranged  by  a  subcommittee 
under  the  chairmanship  of  Professor  Henry  E.  Crampton.  The  following 
general  catalogue  of  the  exhibition  indicates  its  plan  and  scope. 

A 
VARIATION  UNDER  DOMESTICATION 

The  exhibits  demonstrate  the  results  obtained  by  man  with  plants  and 
animals  which  have  been  under  cultivation  or  domestication  for  many 
centuries.  Beginning  with  a  single  original  form,  or  "species,"  many 
different  races  and  types  that  are  stable  and  breed  true  from  generation  to 
generation  have  been  produced  by  a  process  called  technically  "artificial 
selection."  Domesticated  and  cultivated  forms  that  vary  so  as  to  meet  the 
"artificial"  standards  of  human  needs  or  fancies  are  kept  for  breeding 
purposes,  while  the  less  desired  individuals  are  discarded.  Sometimes  the 
original  progenitor  of  such  races  still  occurs  in  a  wild  form,  as  in  the  fowls 
and  pigeons. 

Illustrations 

1.  Races  of  Indian  Corn. 

2.  Races  of  Daffodils. 

3.  Different  breeds   of   domestic   fowls,    together   with   their   wild 

ancestor,  the  Jungle  Fowl. 

4.  Different  breeds  of  pigeons,  with  their  probable  common  ancestor, 

the  Rock  Pigeon. 

5.  Different  breeds  of  dogs. 

B 
VARIATION  IN  NATURE 

The  exhibits  illustrate  the  universal  fact  of  variation  of  groups  of  indi- 
viduals under  natural  conditions.     The  differences  between  any  two  in- 
dividuals may  be  very  slight  —  the  so  called  "fluctuating  variations"  - 
or  they  may  be  wider,  as  in  the  case  of  "mutations."     The  Laws  of  Variation 
may  be  expressed  nearly  always  in  precise  mathematical  form. 

Illustrations 
1.     Races  and  closely-related  species  of  American  Thorn  Trees. 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  7 

2.  Fluctuating  variations  in  one  species  of  a  clam-like  animal,  Tellina. 

3.  Slight  differences  between  and  among  different  types  of  a  kind  of 

terrestrial  snail,  Helix. 

4.  Variable  shells  of  the  common  scallop,  Pecten,  arranged  also  to 

show  the  general  law  of  variation. 

5.  Varieties  of  the  Tiger  Cowry,  from  Malaysia. 

6.  "Mutations,"  or  wide  "deviations  from  type,"  in  several  species 

of  birds. 

C 
STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE 

The  natural  rate  at  which  living  organisms  multiply  is  so  rapid  that  only 
a  small  portion  of  the  individuals  which  begin  life  can  survive  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  The  elimination  of  the  unfit  and  the  survival  of  only  the  fit 
are  the  results  of  the  many-sided  warfare  in  which  all  organisms  must  engage 
because  of  over-multiplication.  Nevertheless,  a  form  that  has  been  intro- 
duced into  a  ne\v  locality  may  spread  with  remarkable  rapidity,  owing  to  a 
partial  suspension  of  selection  brought  about  by  the  exemption  of  the  form 
from  the  severe  struggle  for  existence  under  the  conditions  of  its  original 
habitat. 

Illustrations 

1 .  A  demonstration  of  the  results  of  the  normal  rapid  rate  of  multi- 

plication under  the  supposition  that  no  elimination  takes  place 
—  results  which  could  not  be  produced  in  nature. 

2.  The  Water  Hyacinth,  a  plant  which  has  been  introduced  into 

Florida,  a  new  habitat,  where  it  has  multiplied  at  such  a  rate 
as  to  choke  the  streams. 

3.  A  map  showing  the  area  of  distribution  of  the  English  Sparrow 

in  the  year  1886,  twenty-two  years  after  its  introduction  into 
Xorth  America. 

4.  A  map  showing  the  spread  of  the  Potato-Bug,  during  successive 

decades. 

5.  A  demonstration  of  the  struggle  for  existence  of  young  plants 

grown  from  seeds  planted  in  areas  that  overlap. 

6.  Photographs  of  the  conditions  in  forests,  where  low-shrubbery  is 

prevented  from  growing  because  of  the  lack  of  light  in  the 
shade  of  the  large  trees. 

7.  A  group  showing  the  Meadow-Mouse  and  its  natural  enemies 

and  food-organisms;  a  demonstration  of  the  complexity  of  the 
struggle  for  existence. 


8  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

D 

INSTINCTS 

The  "mental"  operation  of  lower  orders  of  animals,  termed  instinctive 
reactions,  are  well  exemplified  by  the  nest-building  habits  of  birds  and 
insects.  The  materials  employed  and  the  character  of  the  nests  display  the 
adaptive  nature  of  the  instinctive  adjustments  to  different  environmental 
conditions.  The  behavior  of  crustaceans  like  the  Spider-Crab  illustrates 
another  peculiar  instinctive  habit. 

Illustrations 

1.  Nests  of  various  species  of  birds. 

2.  Nests  of  various  social  insects. 

3.  A  Spider-Crab  allowed  to  decorate  itself  with  various  natural 

objects,  so  as  to  be  inconspicuous  through  its  resemblance  to 
its  surroundings. 

4.  The  death-feigning  instinct  in  Bluebirds. 

E 

NATURAL  SELECTION  AND  COLORATION 

Some  striking  results  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  are  found  in  the  adaptive 
coloration  of  several  kinds  of  animals.  Many  organisms  harmonize  in 
color  and  form  with  their  environment,  others  mimic  natural  objects  of 
various  kinds,  gaining  similar  protection  by  such  resemblances. 

Illustrations 

1.  The  Leaf -Butterflies  and  other  insects,  illustrating  various  kinds 

of  protective  resemblances  and  coloration. 

2.  Protective  resemblance  and  color-adaptation  in  the  Sargassum- 

Fish  and  other  lower  vertebrates. 

3.  The  uses  of  color  in  various  species  of  birds. 

4.  A  group  showing  the  seasonal  changes  in  the  coloration  of  the 

Ptarmigan. 

F 
HYBRIDISM 

When  differing  but  related  forms  of  animals  or  plants  are  crossed,  the 
hybrid  offspring  may  resemble  one  parent  in  some  features,  and  the  other 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  9 

parent  in  different  characteristics.  Sometimes  the  hybrid  offspring  will 
exhibit  "reversion,"  that  is,  it  will  differ  from  both  its  parents,  and  will 
resemble  a  remote  ancestral  form.  The  laws  of  inheritance  have  been 
much  more  adequately  formulated  since  the  time  of  Darwin,  as  in  the  case 
of  Mendelian  inheritance. 

Illustrations 

1.  Specimens  of  hybrid  plants  together  with  their  parents. 

2.  Examples  of  hybrid  fowls. 

3.  The  Darwinian  instance  of  reversion  in  fowls. 

4.  The  results  of  hybridization  in  mammalia. 

6 

THE  FOSSIL  RECORD 

Following  the  identification  by  geologists  of  the  relatively  old  and  the 
relatively  recent  layers  of  rocks,  the  remains  of  animals  and  plants  of  earlier 
ages  of  the  earth  demonstrate  the  occurrence  at  first  of  simpler  organisms, 
and  the  successive  appearance  of  more  and  more  complex  groups.  Some- 
times the  fossils  constitute  a  comparatively  complete  series  of  ancestral 
species  leading  to  modern  kinds,  as  in  the  Horse  and  many  invertebrates. 

Illustrations 

1.  A  series  of  specimens  of  fossil  plants  showing  the  succession  of 

their  appearance  upon  the  earth. 

2.  The  general  succession  of  invertebrate  groups. 

-    3.     The    evolution    of    cephalopodous    mollusks, —  Nautiloid    and 
Ammonitoid  types. 

4.  TJie  evolution  of  several  snail  or  gasteropod  types : 

a)     Fulgur  series. 
6)     Fusus  series, 
c)     Paludina  series. 

5.  The  evolution  of  Lamp-Shells,  or  Brachiopods,  as  exemplified  by 

Spirifer  mucronatus. 

6.  Specimens  of  fossil-bearing  rocks  showing  unmodified  and  meta- 

morphosed   conditions.     In    the    latter   case    the   fossils    are 
destroyed. 

7.  The  evolution  of  the  Horse. 

8.  The  evolution  of  the  Camel. 


10  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

H 

GEOGRAPHICAL  DISTRIBUTION 

Few  organisms  occur  uniformly  throughout  the  various  continental  areas 
of  the  earth.  In  general,  land  types  differ  more  or  less  widely  according  to 
the  degree  of  proximity  of  the  areas  where  they  occur,  and  their  differences 
are  usually  regarded  as  due  to  their  adaptation  to  the  unlike  natural  condi- 
tions of  different  areas. 

Illustrations 

1.  Specimens  of  the  larger  fungi  as  examples  of  invariable  boreal 

and  tropical  plants. 

2.  The  Land  Tortoise  of  the  Galapagos  Islands,  a  form  which  is 

peculiar  to  this  entirely  isolated  group  of  islands. 

3.  Several  kinds  of  Ground-Squirrels  from  different  localities  in  the 

United  States. 

4.  Land  Snails  from  valleys  of  the  Society  Islands,  in  the  South 

Pacific  Ocean.  Each  island  possesses  characteristic  forms, 
and  the  different  valleys  of  one  and  the  same  island  often 
contain  unique  forms. 

I 

PRINCIPLES   OF  CLASSIFICATION 

Resemblances  displayed  by  different  species  of  animals  and  plants  are 
regarded  as  indications  of  common  ancestry.  It  is  therefore  possible  to 
classify  organisms  in  a  tree-like  diagrammatic  manner,  into  larger  and 
smaller  groups  according  to  their  fundamental  similarities.  The  principle 
seems  to  be  universal  for  all  plants  and  all  animals. 

Illustrations 

1.  Living  specimens  of  Cactus  plants. 

2.  A  typical  series  of  Crustacea. 

J 

PRINCIPLES   OF  HOMOLOGY 

Parts  of  organisms  presenting  the  same  fundamental  plan  of  construction, 
though  they  differ  in  function,  are  spoken  of  as  "homologous." 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  11 

Illustrations 

1.  Mammalian  limbs  adapted  for  use  in  various  ways,  though  they 

exhibit  the  same  kind  of  skeletal  framework. 

2.  Specimens  illustrating  the  different  forms  of  leaves  of  the  ferns 

and  their  relatives. 

K 
PRINCIPLES   OF   EMBRYOLOGY 

When  an  animal  develops,  it  passes  gradually  from  its  early  stages  with 
their  simple  construction  to  the  progressively  complex  stages  of  later  and 
adult  life.  During  this  process,  it  closely  resembles  in  an  embryonic  condi- 
tion an  adult  organism  of  a  lower  order.  The  general  principle  of  develop- 
ment is  that  an  embryonic  series  of  stages  exhibited  by  any  animal  is  a 
brief  review  or  recapitulation  of  the  ancestral  history  of  its  kind. 

Illustrations 

1.  Models  and  specimens  displaying  the  gill-slits  of  chick  embryos, 

and  their  correspondence  with  the  gill-slits  of  fishes. 

2.  Models  showing  the  blood-vessels  and  the  hearts  of  different 

classes  of  vertebrates,  and  some  of  the  corresponding  embryonic 
stages  in  the  development  of  the  heart  in  man. 

3.  Preparations  showing  the  occurrence  in  a  chick  embryo  of  a 

primitive  body-support,  the  notochord,  which  occurs  in  the 
adult  in  Amphioxus,  a  primitive  relative  of  the  vertebrates, 
and  in  vertebrates. 

4.  Models  showing  the  development  of  the  human  brain,  and  its 

resemblance  at  various  stages  to  the  adult  brains  of  lower 
mammalia. 

5.  The  third  eye  or  pineal  body  of  an  adult  lizard,  and  the  corre- 

sponding vestige  in  the  embryonic  human  brain. 

L 
RUDIMENTARY  AND   VESTIGIAL   ORGANS 

Vestigial  organs  are  remnants  of  once-useful  parts,  that  have  undergone 
regressive  evolution.  Rudimentary  structures  often  occur  in  some  forms, 
while  in  related  species  they  reach  a  far  higher  degree  of  development. 


12  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

Illustrations 

1.  A  Prickly-pear  Cactus  and  a  New  Zealand  Bramble  showing 

reduced  leaves. 

2.  Insects  exhibiting  rudimentary  and  vestigial  organs. 

M 
INSECT-EATING   PLANTS  AND   CLIMBING  PLANTS 

These  plants  display  two  different  kinds  of  adaptations  —  one  in  respect 
to  nutrition  and  the  other  in  respect  to  the  development  of  structures  to 
afford  support. 

N 
FERTILIZATION   IN   PLANTS 

The  exhibit  demonstrates  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  process  of  fertiliza- 
tion, and  the  special  mechanisms  that  these  organisms  have  developed  to 
bring  about  fertilization  in  various  ways.  The  processes  are  adjusted 
intimately  to  the  visits  made  by  insects  to  flowers  for  nourishment. 

0 

THE  DESCENT   OF  MAN 

The  general  principles  of  evolution  hold  true  for  the  attainment  by  the 
human  species  of  its  present  place  in  nature.  The  exhibits  demonstrate  in 
a  general  manner  the  various  stages  reached  by  organisms  nearly  related  to 
man,  which  the  human  species  has  surpassed. 

Illustrations 

1.  A  series  of  primate  animals  from  the  Lemurs  to  Man. 

2.  A  series  of  crania  of  primate  mammals,  showing  the  gradual 

enlargement  of  the  brain  case  and  the  relative  reduction  of  the 
jaws. 

3.  A  series  of  casts  and  models  of  the  brains  of  various  primates, 

showing  the  progressive  evolution  of  the  brain,  and  especially 
of  the  cerebrum. 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  13 

DARWINIANA 
Loaned  by  MR.  CHARLES  F.  Cox. 

1.  Page  from  original  manuscript  of  "Descent  of  Man."     Text  of  part  of 

Page  309,  Chapter  VIII,  Volume  I.     1st  edition,  1871. 

2.  Page  from  original  manuscript  of  "Descent  of  Man."     Text  of  part 

of  Page  183,  Chapter  V,  Volume  I.     1st  edition,  1871. 

3.  Two  pages  from  the  original  manuscript  of  "Descent  of  Man."     Text 

of  part  of  Pages  42-43,  Chapter  II,  Volume  I.     1st  edition,  1871. 

4.  Page  from  the  personal  journal  of  Charles  Danvin,  kept  while  on  the 

"Beagle  Voyage,"  1831-1836. 

5.  Sixteen  autograph  letters.     Miscellaneous. 

6.  Complete  collection  of  letters  to  W.  B.  Tegetmeier,  1855-1880. 

7.  Letters  to  Albany  Hancock,  1849-1854.     (Concerning  the  discovery  of 

the  parasitical  or  cornplemental  male  Cirripedes.) 

BOOKS 

8.  Researches  in  Natural  History.     1st  edition,  1839. 

9.  Researches   in   Natural   History   and    Geology.     2nd   edition,    1845. 

2  copies. 

10.  Zoology  of  the  Voyage  of  H.  M.  S.  Beagle.     Edited  by  Charles  Darwin. 

London,  1840.     3  vols. 

11.  Structure  and  Distribution  of  Coral  Reefs.     1st  edition,  1842. 

12.  The  Structure  of  Coral  Reefs.     2nd  edition,  1874. 

13.  Observations  on  Volcanic  Islands.     1st  edition,  1844. 

14.  Observations  on  Coral  Islands.     2nd  edition,  1876. 

15.  Coral  Reefs,  Volcanic  Islands,  South  America.     United  edition,  1851. 

16.  Geological  Observations  on  South  America.     1st  edition,  1846. 

17.  Monograph  on  the  Cirripedia, —  Lepadidse.     1st  edition,  1851. 

18.  Monograph  on  the  Cirripedia, —  Balanidae.     1st  edition,  1854. 

19.  Fossil  Lepadida?  and  Balanidae.     1st  edition,  1851-1854. 

20.  "The  Origin  of  Species."     One  of  the  1250  copies  of  the  1st  edition, 

November  24,  1859. 

21.  On  the  Origin  of  Species.  1st  edition,  1859. 

22.  On  the  Origin  of  Species.  2nd  edition,  1860.     2  copies. 

23.  On  the  Origin  of  Species.  3rd  edition,  1861. 

24.  On  the  Origin  of  Species.  4th  edition,  1866. 

25.  On  the  Origin  of  Species.  5th  edition,  1869. 

26.  On  the  Origin  of  Species.  6th  edition,  1882. 


14  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

27.  Naturalist's  Voyage  Round  the  World.     1st  edition,  1860. 

28.  The  Fertilization  of  Orchids.     1st  edition,  1862. 

29.  The  Fertilization  of  Orchids.     2nd  edition,  1877. 

30.  On  the  Movements  and  Habits  of  Climbing  Plants.     1st  edition,  1865. 

31.  On  the  Movements  and  Habits  of  Climbing  Plants.     2nd  edition,  1875. 

2  copies. 

32.  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication.     1st  edition,  1868.     2  vols. 

33.  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication.     2nd  edition,  1875.     2  vols. 

34.  The  Descent  of  Man.     1st  edition,  1871.     2  vols.     3  copies. 

35.  The  Descent  of  Man.     2nd  edition,  1874.     2  copies. 

36.  On  the  Expression  of  the  Emotions.     1st  edition,  1872. 

37.  On  Insectivorous  Plants.     1st  edition,  1875. 

38.  Cross  and  Self  Fertilization  of  Plants.     1st  edition,  1876. 

39.  Cross  and  Self  Fertilization  of  Plants.     2nd  edition,  1888. 

40.  The  Different  Forms  of  Flowers.     1st  edition,  1877. 

41.  The  Movements  of  Plants.     By  Charles  and  Francis  Darwin.     1st 

edition,  1880. 

42.  Vegetable  Mould  and  Earth-worms.     1st  edition,  1881. 

43.  Vegetable  Mould  and  Earth-worms.     1882. 

WORKS  TO  WHICH  CHARLES  DARWIN  CONTRIBUTED  OR  WHICH  CONTAIN 
WRITINGS  OF  HIS  NOT  ELSEWHERE  PUBLISHED. 

44.  Voyages   of  the  Adventure   and   the   Beagle.     3   vols.    &  appendix. 

London,  1839.     Volume  III  by  Charles  Darwin. 

45.  The  Admiralty  Manual  of  Scientific  Enquiry.     London,  1849.     "  Geol- 

ogy" by  Charles  Darwin. 

46.  Flowers  and  their  Unbidden   Guests.     By  Kerner.     London,   1878. 

Prefatory  letter  by  Charles  Darwin. 

47.  Life  of  Erasmus  Darwin.     London,   1879.     Prefatory  notice  by  C. 

Darwin. 

48.  Prehistoric    Europe.     By    James    Geikie.     London,    1881.     Quotes 

letters  from  Charles  Darwin  on  Southampton  gravels. 

49.  Studies  in  the  Theory  of  Descent.     By  Weismann.     London,  1882. 

Prefatory  note  by  Charles  Darwin. 

50.  The  Fertilization  of  Flowers.     By  Miiller.     London,  1883.     Preface 

by  Charles  Darwin. 

51.  Mental   Evolution   in   Animals.     By   Romanes.     New   York,    1884. 

Posthumous  essay  on  "Instinct"  by  Charles  Darwin. 

52.  Darwinism.     By  Alfred  Russel  Wallace.     London,  1889. 

53.  "Miscellaneous  and  Hitherto  Uncollected  Writings  of  Charles  Darwin." 

Compiled  by  C.  F.  Cox,  New  York,  1904. 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  15 

54.  "Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin."     Edited  by  his  son  Francis 

Darwin.     Original  edition,  1886.     Extra-illustrated  with  more  than 
400  portraits,  autograph  letters,  etc. 

55.  "More   Letters   of   Charles   Darwin."     Edited   by    his   son    Francis 

Darwin.     Original  edition,  1903.     Extra-illustrated  with  about  200 
portraits. 

56.  "Pedigree  of  the  Family  of  Darwin."     Compiled  by  H.  Burke,  Esq., 

F.  S.  A.,  1888. 

57.  Catalogue  of  the  Library  of  Charles  Darwin,  now  in  the  Botany  .School, 

Cambridge.  • 

58.  Portrait.     Photograph  from  life  by,Maull  &  Fox,  about  1854,  print 

from  recently  restored  negative. 

59.  Portrait.     Photograph  from  life  by  Maull  &  Fox,  about  1854.     Print 

from  recently  restored  negative. 

60.  Portrait.     Proof  of  wood-engraving,   made   in   1889  by  G.    Kruell, 

after  photograph  made  from  life  by  Maull  &  Fox,  about  1854. 

61.  Portrait.     Woodcut  from  "Harper's  Magazine"  of  October,  1884,  after 

photograph  from  life  by  Maull  &  Fox,  about  1854. 

62.  Portrait.     Photograph  from  life  by  Mrs.  Cameron,  1868. 

63.  Portrait.     Engraving  on  steel  by  C.  H.  Jeens,  published  in  "Nature," 

June  4,  1874,  from  photograph  from  life  by  O.  J.  Rejlander,  about 
1870. 

64.  Portrait.     Woodcut  from  "London  Graphic"  of  July  29,  1882,  after 

photograph  from  life  by  O.  G.  Rejlander,  about  1870. 

65.  Portrait.     Proof  of  wood-cut  from  "Century  Magazine"  of  January, 

1883,  after  photograph  by  Capt.  Darwin,  about  1874. 

66.  Portraits.     Two  copies  (one  loaned  by  President  H.  F.  Osborn)  of 

proof  etching   by  G.  Mercier,  published    1890,  after  the  painting 
made  from  life  in  1875  by  W.  Ouless,  R.  A. 

67.  Portrait.     Woodbury-type  from   photograph   from   life   by  Lock   & 

Whitfield.     Published  in  "Men  of  Mark"    by  Sampson,  Low   & 
Co.,  1876. 

68.  Portrait.     Proof  etching  by  Leopold  Flameng,  published  1883,  after 

painting  from  life  by  Hon.  John   Collier,  made  for  the  Linnsean 
Society  in  1881. 

69.  Portrait.     Proof  wood-engraving,  made  in  1889  by  G.  Kruell,  after  a 

photograph  made  from  life  by  Elliott  &  Fry,  1881. 

70.  Portraits.     Three  photographs  from  life,  by  Elliott  &  Fry,  1881. 

71.  Portrait.     Engraving   by  S.  Hollyer,  after  photograph  from  life  by 

Elliott  &  Fry,  1881. 

72.  Portrait.     (Property  of  H.  F.  Osborn.) 


16  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

73.  Portraits  of  Darwin's  contemporaries.     Eighty  transparencies. 

74.  Interior  of  Darwin's  Library.     (Property  of  H.  F.  Osborn.) 

The  exercises  of  the  afternoon  were  held  around  the  bust  as  a  center. 
The  President  of  the  Academy,  Mr.  Charles  F.  Cox,  called  the  meeting  to 
order  at  about  a  quarter  after  three  o'clock  and  delivered  the  following 
address : 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF  CHARLES  DARWIN. 
BY  CHARLES  F.  Cox. 

We  are  assembled,  at  the  invitation  of  an  organization  devoted  to  the 
dissemination  of  scientific  knowledge,  under  the  hospitable  roof  of  an 
institution  maintained  for  the  promotion  of  systematic  observation,  for  the 
purpose  of  honoring  the  memory  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  seers.  Charles 
Darwin,  whose  birthday  we  celebrate,  was  a  man  of  the  clearest  mental 
vision  born  into  a  generation  scientifically  blind.  He  first,  of  those  in  his 
day  accounted  wise,  was  able  to  see  all  nature  unfolding  according  to  uni- 
form and  verifiable  law.  The  outlook  of  other  men  called  by  his  contem- 
poraries scientists  and  philosophers  was,  as  a  rule,  limited  and  obscured  by 
a  narrowing  and  hampering  doctrine  of  supernatural  intervention.  It  is 
hard  for  us,  who  are  privileged  to  contemplate  with  admiring  minds  the 
harmonious  interrelations  of  all  natural  phenomena,  to  realize  that  only 
fifty  years  ago  it  was  commonly  regarded  as  both  irrational  and  immoral  to 
believe  that  one  great  principle  underlay  the  origin,  maintenance,  diversifica- 
tion and  development  of  living  forms  and  that  that  principle  was  discov- 
erable through  human  investigation.  During  the  ages  previous  to  the 
memorable  year  1859  a  few  bold  thinkers,  now  and  then,  had  ventured  to 
suggest  a  theory  of  general  evolution,  but  they  had  failed  to  supply  it  with  a 
substantial  foundation  of  proof,  or  to  assign  to  it  a  reasonable  and  intelligible 
cause,  and  had  been,  consequently,  one  and  all,  overwhelmed  and  sup- 
pressed by  the  powerful  and  prevalent  dogma  of  special  creation.  Natura- 
lists had  been  for  centuries  active  in  the  collection  of  facts,  but,  until  Darwin 
came,  the  various  attributes  and  activities  of  living  things  remained  discon- 
nected and  unexplained.  Indeed,  it  was  impossible  that  they  should  have 
been  correlated  and  elucidated  as  long  as  the  domain  of  science  was  in 
thralldom  to  tyrannical  authority  and  originality  of  thought  was  little  less 
than  a  crime.  For  a  hundred  years  prior  to  Darwin  even  professed  students 
of  nature  were  not  free  to  see  what  lay  under  their  very  eyes.  The  scientific 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  17 

world  was  awaiting  a  liberator.  Finally  the  revolution  was  proclaimed  and 
the  first  decisive  blow  struck  by  the  publication  of  "The  Origin  of  Species" 
on  the  twenty-fourth  of  November,  1859.  It  was  no  hasty  and  ill-considered 
stroke.  Events  had  been  shaping  themselves  to  this  end  since  the  twenty- 
seventh  of  December,  1831,  when  the  little  brig  Beagle  sailed  from  Plymouth 
harbor,  bearing  the  unknown  and  youthful  Charles  Darwin  to  the  discovery 
of  a  new  world  —  not,  however,  an  unexplored  continent  to  be  claimed  for 
commerce  and  civilization,  but  a  vastly  greater  and  more  valuable  realm  of 
thought  to  be  opened  to  knowledge  and  conquered  for  intellectual  freedom. 
Darwin,  like  the  prophets  of  old,  in  preparation  for  his  exalted  mission, 
betook  himself  to  the  uninhabited  wilderness,  away  from  the  domination  of 
other  minds,  in  order  that  he  might  draw  inspiration  from  untrammeled  and 
clarifying  communion  with  nature.  In  his  narrow  cabin  on  the  broad 
Atlantic,  on  the  desert  plains  of  Patagonia,  on  desolate  and  unpeopled 
islands  of  the  Pacific,  in  the  dark  and  solemn  forests  of  the  tropics,  and  on 
the  summits  of  the  bleak  and  barren  Andes  he  gained  the  coveted  prize  of 
wisdom  which  had  been  denied  him  in  the  populous  halls  of  two  great 
universities,  where  his  free  spirit  had  rebelled  against  the  rigid  conven- 
tionality of  classical  education. 

Although  a  born  investigator,  he  had  been  driven  and  harassed  for  four- 
teen years  by  unthinking  instructors  devoid  of  both  the  ability  and  the 
disposition  to  consider  his  natural  endowments  and  inclinations  and  who, 
with  one  or  two  exceptions,  according  to  his  own  later  judgment,  wasted 
their  time  upon  an  unappreciative  and  discouraging  pupil.  He  says  of 
himself  that  he  was  slow  in  learning,  but  a  review  of  his  productive  life 
clearly  shows  that,  if  he  was  dull  in  any  respect,  it  was  solely  in  the  matter 
of  accepting  ideas  at  second  hand.  It  happened,  merely,  that  what  most 
of  his  teachers  were  prepared  to  impart  he  was  not  constituted  to  receive; 
and  so  one  of  the  acutest  observers  the  world  has  ever  known  was  thought  to 
be  inattentive  and  unreceptive.  During  all  the  school  days  of  his  childhood, 
passed  in  his  native  town  of  Shrewsbury,  not  only  were  his  superb  mental 
gifts  wholly  unrecognized,  but  no  attempt  was  ever  made  to  find  out  if  he 
had  any  such  gifts.  He  spent  seven  useless  years  at  Dr.  Butler's  so-called 
"great  school,"  but,  apparently,  the  head  master  never  came  to  know  his 
talented  pupil,  for  the  educational  system  which  prevailed  in  that  institution 
had  no  reference  to  "the  discovery  of  the  exceptional  man."  The  one 
ceaseless  effort  of  his  schoolmasters  was  to  crowd  him  into  the  common  mold. 

Receiving  no  sympathy  and  little  assistance  from  those  who  should 
have  been  the  guides  and  advisers  of  his  boyhood,  he  developed  "a  strong 
taste  for  long  solitary  walks"  and  cultivated  the  habit  of  stealing  time  for 
more  or  less  surreptitious  collecting  in  several  departments  of  natural  history. 


18  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

Thus  he  became,  in  all  important  respects,  self-taught  and,  driven  to  his  own 
resources,  his  natural  inclination  to  consider  his  path  of  life  as  lying  far  aside 
from  the  common  highway  was  confirmed  and  strengthened.  This  sense  of 
solitariness  followed  him  to  the  end  of  his  life  and  was,  no  doubt,  an  impor- 
tant factor  in  the  formation  and  preservation  of  his  extraordinary  individ- 
uality and  faith  in  his  own  powers.  Darwin's  followers  may  therefore  bless 
even  the  obtuseness  and  shortsightedness  of  his  preceptors  who  failed  to  spoil 
him  by  their  unwise  treatment. 

When,  in  1825,  Doctor  Robert  Darwin  concluded  that  his  son  Charles 
was  lacking  in  natural  aptitude  for  scholarship,  he  sent  him  to  Edinburgh 
University,  intending  that  he  should  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  his  father 
and  of  his  grandfather  by  becoming  a  physician.  But  here,  again,  the 
young  man  found  himself  unable  to  receive  what  was  offered  him  on  the 
strength  of  ancient  authority.  The  instruction  dispensed  in  that  hoary 
institution  was,  to  him,  perfunctory  and  uninspiring  and  he  was  once  more 
forced  to  seek  the  real  enlargement  of  his  knowledge  by  self-directed  methods. 
In  this  way  he  appears  to  have  obtained,  at  Edinburgh,  some  sort  of  ac- 
quaintance with  the  fundamental  principles  of  scientific  research,  but,  as 
the  learning  thus  acquired  was  not  in  the  line  of  his  intended  profession,  it 
was  not  appreciated  by  his  family  and  friends.  Accordingly,  after  two 
sessions  spent  at  that  university,  it  was  decided  that  his  regular  studies 
had  been  entirely  misdirected  and  he  was  therefore  withdrawn  and  sent  to 
Cambridge.  There  he  was  still  worse  misguided  in  the  endeavor  to  educate 
him  in  theology.  Again  was  repeated  the  old  story  of  an  uncongenial 
curriculum  ostensibly  conformed  to  but  in  reality  shirked  and  avoided  in 
favor  of  natural  history  privately  followed  by  side  paths.  The  unwilling 
student  wished  to  be  obedient  to  his  father's  direction,  but  native  bent 
proved  stronger  than  conventional  rule  —  the  call  of  destiny  louder  than  the 
voice  of  filial  duty. 

His  father,  in  most  things  a  wise  man,  saw  in  his  son's  insect-  and  bird- 
hunting  proclivity  a  tendency  to  the  life  of  "an  idle  sporting  man"  and 
was  sorely  grieved  and  disappointed  when  he  was  obliged  to  concede  the 
failure  of  his  plan  to  connect  the  house  of  Darwin  with  the  Church  of  England. 
Fortunately,  however,  the  troublesome  student  came  under  the  influence,  at 
Cambridge,  of  a  teacher  endowed  with  more  than  ordinary  discernment  and, 
in  this  particular  matter,  with  somewhat  unusual  independence  and  courage 
and  he  took  the  budding  naturalist  and  his  lawless  pursuits  under  his  patron- 
age and  protection.  To  the  faith  and  friendship  of  Professor  J.  S.  Henslow 
Darwin  was  indebted  for  his  appointment  to  the  Beagle  expedition,  and  to 
Professor  Henslow,  who  robbed  the  church  to  enrich  science,  the  world  owes 
an  incalculable  debt  of  gratitude  for  the  discovery,  if  not  for  the  development, 
of  one  of  its  loftiest  geniuses. 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  19 

Others  besides  Henslow,  however,  contributed  to  the  fixation  of 
Darwin's  inborn  talents  and  abilities,  but  Darwin  never  admitted  that 
he  received,  either  at  Edinburgh  or  at  Cambridge,  any  thing  like  syste- 
matic mental  training.  He  was,  from  the  beginning  of  his  school  davs  to 
the  end  of  his  university  life,  a  person  set  apart  for  individual  preparation 
for  a  special  and  peculiar  career.  When  he  bade  farewell  to  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  in  the  summer  of  1831,  his  actual  education  was  yet  to  be  ac- 
quired, but  not  through  human  instruction.  He  has  himself  declared: 
"I  have  always  felt  that  I  owe  to  the  voyage  the  first  real  training  or  educa- 
tion of  my  mind." 

It  wras  therefore  no  professional  scientist  who  eagerly  accepted  the 
unsalaried  post  of  naturalist  to  the  Beagle  expedition  around  the  world, 
but  a  modest,'  though  confident,  youth  of  twenty-two  whose  most  impor- 
tant article  of  outfit  was  the  first  volume  of  the  first  edition  of  Lyell's  "Prin- 
ciples of  Geology,"  which  had  been  published  the  year  before,  the  second 
volume  of  which  was  not  issued  until  after  Darwin  had  reached  South 
America.  Thus  it  was  providentially  ordered  that  during  the  formative 
period  covered  by  this  epoch-making  voyage,  Darwin  should  remain  as  free 
as  possible  from  human  influences.  If,  instead  of  proceeding,  raw  as  he 
was,  directly  from  the  seclusion  of  the  university  to  the  isolation  of  the 
voyage,  he  had  directed  his  steps  to  the  metropolis  and  had  there  mingled 
with  the  leaders  in  scientific  thought,  it  is  quite  possible,  if  not  probable, 
that  he  would  have  fallen  under  their  authority  and  would  have  accepted 
the  orthodox  beliefs  of  his  time.  If  that  had  been  the  case,  we  might  be 
dominated  to-day  by  the  prohibitive  doctrine  of  the  immutability  of  species, 
instead  of  enjoying  that  freedom  of  thought  and  liberty  of  investigation  to 
which  Darwin  made  us  heirs.  But,  happily  for  the  intellectual  world, 
during  the  five  years  which  Darwin  spent  on  the  Beagle,  under  the  intimate 
tutelage  of  mother  nature,  he  laid,  for  our  benefit,  as  well  as  for  his  own, 
the  solid  foundations  of  his  never  failing  habit  of  mind  in  which  open-eyed 
teachableness  ever  supplemented  unwavering  honesty  of  purpose  and  fear- 
lessness of  approach. 

After  Darwin's  return  from  the  circumnavigation  of  the  globe,  he  re- 
sided, for  a  little  more  than  five  years,  in  London,  and  that  was  the  only 
portion  of  his  life  during  which  he  was  in  actual  personal  contact  with  any 
considerable  number  of  his  fellowmen.  Even  then,  however,  he  was  mostly 
engaged  with  his  own  thoughts,  for  he  was  arranging  his  collections  and 
preparing  for  publication  the  results  of  his  observations  made  while  on  the 
Beagle  voyage.  It  was  at  the  very  beginning  of  this  residence  in  London 
(July,  1837),  while  the  things  he  had  seen  in  South  America  and  the  Pacific 
Islands  were  still  fresh  in  his  memory  that  he  opened  his  first  note-book 


20  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

for  facts  in  relation  to  the  origin  of  species,  about  which  he  says  he  "had 
long  reflected."  For  twenty-two  years  thereafter  Mr.  Darwin  continued  to 
pursue  this  revolutionizing  subject  with  unexampled  patience  and,  except 
as  to  two  or  three  intimate  friends,  entirely  within  the  privacy  of  his  own 
mind. 

In  September,  1842,  he  went  into  retirement  at  Down,  an  out-of-the- 
way  village  in  Kent.  There,  partly  compelled  by  ill-health,  he  dwelt  as  a 
recluse  for  forty  years,  serenely  contemplating  nature  and  diligently  gather- 
ing information,  but  seldom  emerging  into  the  world  from  which  his  richly- 
stored  and  phenomenally  creative  intellect  had  little  to  gain  but  to  which  it 
never  ceased  to  give,  during  the  remainder  of  his  life.  Bare  knowledge  he 
welcomed  from  any  source,  but  opinions  and  deductions  he  invariably 
produced  for  himself.  What  he  wrote  to  H.  W.  Bates,  who  complained 
of  a  want  of  advice  is  true  of  Darwin  himself:  "Part  of  your  great  originality 
of  views,"  he  said,  "may  be  due  to  the  necessity  of  self-exertion  of  thought." 
What  has  been  said  by  his  son  Francis  is  equally  true  of  Mr.  Darwin  —  one 
of  his  most  striking  characteristics  was  "that  supreme  power  of  seeing  and 
thinking  what  the  rest  of  the  world  had  overlooked." 

Mr.  Darwin  was  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  a  genius,  but  I  know 
of  no  good  definition  of  a  genius  but  a  man  of  insight.  The  person  who  by 
his  natural  acuteness  of  perception  is  able  to  see  into  and  through  problems 
which  to  other  men  are  baffling  or  insoluble,  has  the  highest  right  to  be  con- 
sidered inspired.  Darwin's  wonderful  endowment  in  this  respect  constituted 
him,  by  divine  right,  a  leader  of  men.  The  world  has  always  justly  honored 
its  standard  bearers  and  we  are  here  to  pay  homage  to  the  name  of  one  of 
the  most  attractive  and  commanding  of  them  all.  In  other  parts  of  this  city 
and  of  this  land,  our  fellow-citizens  are  gathering  to-day  to  pay  grateful 
tribute  to  the  estimable  character,  and  to  recall  the  memorable  deeds  of  a 
great  emancipator.  We  likewise  are  celebrating  the  beneficent  acts  of  a 
man,  simple  and  modest  as  that  other,  who,  at  a  critical  period,  spoke 
courageous  words  which  conferred  freedom  on  millions  of  his  fellow  creatures. 
It  is  altogether  fitting  that  the  birthdays  of  these  two  benefactors  should  be 
the  same. 

We  now  dedicate  this  monument,  in  this  appropriate  place,  not  only  to 
the  honor  and  memory  of  Charles  Darwin  the  great  thinker,  whose  life  and 
personality  we  admire,  but  also  to  the  encouragement  and  guidance  of  all 
who  may  hereafter  frequent  these  halls  —  as  a  testimony  to  the  power  of 
self-reliance  and  independence  of  mind  which  Charles  Darwin  preeminently 
exemplified  and  illustrated.  May  this  portrait  of  a  noble  truth-seeker  which 
we  now  unveil,  signify,  for  all  time  to  come,  to  him  who  would  advance  the 
boundaries  of  scientific  knowledge,  that  nature  will  yield  up  her  secrets  only 
when  appealed  to  directly  and  in  humility  and  purity  of  spirit. 


ANNALS  N.  Y.  ACAD.  Sci. 


VOLUME   XIX,  PLATE  II. 


PLATE  II. 

THE  ACADEMY  BUST  OF   DARWIN. 

Right  side  of  the  model. 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  21 

At  the  close  of  his  address,  President  Cox  gave  the  signal  for  unveiling 
the  bust,1  and  turning  to  President  Henry  Fairfield  Osborn  said 

President  Osborn: 

On  behalf  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Sciences,  I  have  the  honor  of 
presenting  this  bust  to  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History  and  of 
asking  your  acceptance  of  it,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  stand  in  this  place  for 
many  generations  to  come  as  evidence  of  the  high  esteem  in  which  the  life 
and  work  of  Charles  Darwin  are  held  by  the  men  of  science  of  this  country, 
and  also  as  a  token  of  the  cordial  relations  existing  between  the  Academy  of 
Sciences  and  the  Museum  of  Natural  History,  which  you  yourself  have  done 
much  to  establish  and  promote. 

In  response  to  the  address  of  President  Cox  and  the  presentation  of  the 
bust,  President  Osborn  replied  as  follows: 


ACCEPTANCE  OF  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  DARWIN. 

BY  HENRY  FAIRFIELD  OSBORN, 
President  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History. 

The  bronze  bust  of  Charles  Darwin  presented  by  the  New  York  Academy 
of  Sciences  is  accepted  by  the  Trustees  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural 
History  with  a  three-fold  meaning. 

First,  as  a  noble  work  of  art  conveying  in  its  fidelity  of  portraiture  a 
striking  likeness  of  the  great  naturalist,  with  the  far-seeing  vision  of  his  deep- 
set  eyes  controlled  by  a  great  brain  in  which  the  powers  of  observation  and 
of  reason  were  developed  far  beyond  the  average.  Personal  recollection  of 
Darwin's  face  and  head  strengthens  the  first  impression  that  this  latest 
work  of  William  Couper  will  be  welcomed  by  naturalists  everywhere  as  a 
singularly  grand  and  impressive  likeness. 

The  second  reason  why  this  gift  is  welcome  is  that  it  memorializes  in  a 
manner  most  grateful  to  the  Trustees  and  Scientific  Staff  of  this  Museum 
that  the  scientific  men  of  New  York  appreciate  the  work  that  is  being  carried 
on  here  for  the  promotion  of  natural  science,  that  the  combination  of  muni- 


1  The  bust  is  of  bronze,  of  heroic  size,  and  is  mounted  upon  a  pedestal  of  polished 
gneissoid  granite  from  Stony  Creek,  Connecticut.  The  bust  was  prepared  expressly  for  the 
Academy  by  the  New  York  sculptor  William  Couper  from  photographs  and  other  data. 
The  portrait  represents  the  naturalist  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  powers  and  rather  past  mid- 
dle life. 


22  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

cipal  and  private  munificence  with  the  ardor  of  exploration  and  research 
and  devotion  to  public  scientific  education  for  which  this  institution  stands 
meets  the  approval  and  support  of  the  members  of  the  New  York  Academy 
of  Sciences,  the  oldest  and  most  dignified  of  all  the  scientific  associations  in 
this  great  city.  This  gift  will  encourage  the  Museum  to  renewed  efforts 
both  in  the  sphere  of  pure  science  and  in  the'sphere  of  popular  education. 

Finally  the  gift  is  welcome  because  it  permanently  associates  the  name  of 
the  great  naturalist  with  the  Museum  and  especially  with  one  of  our  newer 
exhibition  halls,  which  is  especially  devoted  to  the  exposition  of  the  great 
general  phenomena  of  biology,  as  seen  in  the  structure,  the  embryonic 
development,  the  adaptness  in  color  and  form,  the  marvelous  diversity 
but  yet  unity  of  the  animal  world,  to  the  true  interpretation  of  which  Charles 
Darwin  devoted  his  life. 

Further  to  cement  the  name  and  spirit  of  Darwin  with  the  exhibition  in 
the  midst  of  which  this  splendid  portrait  will  be  placed,  it  gives  me  great 
pleasure  to  announce  that  the  Trustees  have  unanimously  voted  to  name 
this  hall  after  the  illustrious  naturalist,  "Darwin  Hall,"  and  have  prepared 
and  placed  here  on  this  centennial  day  two  bronze  tablets  which  will  be  a 
permanent  record  of  the  time  and  place  of  this  dedication. 

At  the  close  of  President  Osborn's  address  the  following  addresses  were 
delivered,  setting  forth  Danvin's  relations  to  the  three  subdivisions  of 
natural  science  —  geology,  botany  and  zoology  —  in  pursuit  of  which  he 
expended  his  great  energies. 


DARWIN  AND  GEOLOGY. 
BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  JAMES  STEVENSON. 

Charles  Darwin  was  born  in  a  time  of  intellectual  unrest.  Explorers, 
students  of  chemistry  and  workers  in  mines  had  been  adding  to  actual 
knowledge  for  nearly  one  third  of  a  century  and  thoughtful  men  had  been 
forced  to  recognize  the  worthlessness  of  many  conceptions  which  had  long 
passed  current.  Nowhere  was  this  unrest  more  manifest  than  among  the 
younger  geologists;  but  they  were  compelled  to  express  themselves  cautiously 
for,  fettered  by  a  false  chronology,  the  church  dignitaries  who  controlled 
the  universities  rebuked  investigation  and  branded  as  infidels  those  who 
recorded  obnoxious  facts.  Little  more  than  a  year  prior  to  Danvin's  birth, 
the  Geological  Society  of  London  had  been  founded  as  a  protest  against 
subjective  study  of  this  globe,  but  already  many  adherents  to  the  principles 


PLATE  III. 

THE  ACADEMY   BUST  OF  DARWIN. 

Left  side  of  the  model. 


ANNALS  N .  Y.  ACAD.  Sci . 


VOLUME  XIX,  PLATE  III, 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  23 

of  that  society  had  appeared  on  the  continent,  proclaiming  that  actual 
knowledge  of  conditions  must  precede  attempts  to  explain  them. 

The  development  of  opinion  was  so  rapid  that  before  Darwin  reached 
his  majority  the  geological  pendulum  had  made  its  great  swing  from  the 
doctrine  of  cataclysms  to  that  of  uniformity;  from  the  belief  that  this  globe 
is  less  than  6,000  years  old  to  an  abiding  faith  that  its  age  cannot  be  measured 
in  years.  It  was  amid  such  conditions  that,  toward  the  close  of  his  univer- 
sity studies,  he  came  under  the  influence  of  Henslow  and  Sedgwick,  the 
latter  being  engaged  at  that  time  along  with  Murchison  in  an  effort  to  unravel 
the  tangle  of  Welsh  geology.  Some  have  said  that  these  men  taught  him 
how  to  observe;  not  so,  he  was  already  a  keen  observer,  and  thev  merely 
led  him  into  wider  fields. 

In  1831,  Captain  Fitzroy  was  assigned  to  command  H.  M.  S.  Beagle, 
a  little  brig  of  240  tons,  and  was  commissioned  to  complete  the  coast  survey 
of  southern  South  America  as  well  as  to  run  a  line  around  the  globe.  When 
he  expressed  the  wish  to  be  accompanied  by  a  naturalist,  Darwin,  then  only 
twenty-two  years  old,  promptly  volunteered  his  services,  which  were  ac- 
cepted, and  he  was  enrolled  as  a  supernumerary  member  of  the  staff.  The 
Beagk  left  England  on  December  27,  1831,  and  returned  on  October  2, 
1836,  bringing  with  it  Charles  Darwin,  now  grown  intellectually  to  man's 
stature  and  bearing  a  notable  cargo  of  material  collections,  as  well  as  of 
accumulated  observations.  There  was  no  haste  in  publication;  aside  from 
some  very  brief  communications  to  societies,  nothing  appeared  until  1839, 
when  the  Journal  of  Researches  was  printed.  Owen's  descriptions  of  the 
fossil  mammalia  were  issued  in  1840,  with  an  introduction  by  Darwin,  and 
the  final  publication  of  results  was  made  in  three,  parts,  dated  1842,  1844, 
and  1846.  Thus  early  in  his  career,  Darwin  showed  that  caution  which 
characterized  him  throughout  life,  an  indifference  to  priority  which  was  the 
outgrowth  of  his  love  of  accuracy. 

Part  2  of  the  "Geological  Observations,"  dated  1844,  relates  chiefly 
to  volcanic  islands.  In  most  cases  the  stay  at  those  was  brief  and  the 
studies  were  fragmentary;  yet  Darwin  saw  enough  to  let  him  discuss  the 
origin  of  volcanic  cones,  to  determine  some  cardinal  points  respecting  the 
distribution  of  the  islands,  to  distinguish  submarine  from  subaerial  lava 
flows  and  to  prove  that  experimental  studies  on  metamorphosis  of  limeMones 
had  led  to  very  nearlv  true  conceptions  of  the  process. 

As  the  coast  survey  of  southern  South  America  was  the  important  object 
of  Captain  Fitzroy's  expedition,  there  was  ample  time  for  a  good  reconnais- 
sance of  that  region  and  Darwin  spent  nearly  six  months  in  studying  the 
pampas  from  the  Parana  and  Uraguay  rivers  southward  almost  to  Magellan's 
Strait.  A  synopsis  was  given  as  an  introduction  to  Owen's  memoir,  but  the 


24  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

details  did  not  appear  until  1846,  when  they  were  published  as  Part  3]of  the 
"Geological  Observations."  The  whole  subject  was  discussed  attractively 
in  the  second  edition  of  the  Journal  of  Researches. 

The  superficial  deposit  of  the  great  plains  is  a  "reddish  argillaceous 
earth,"  containing  concretions  of  indurated  marl,  which  at  times  become 
continuous  layers  or  even  replace  much  of  the  red  earth.  In  the  northerly 
part  of  the  plains  area,  this  pampas  deposit,  which  passes  downward  into 
sands,  limestones  and  clays  of  late  Tertiary  age,  yielded  no  marine  shells  to 
Darwin;  its  infusoria,  studied  by  Ehrenberg,  proved  to  be  partly  marine, 
partly  freshwater,  while  the  marly  concretions  resemble  some  freshwater 
limestones  seen  in  Europe;  but  this  paucity  of  invertebrate  life  was  unim- 
portant, for  the  whole  of  that  region  proved  to  be  one  vast  cemetery,  in  which 
the  skeletons  of  gigantic  extinct  mammals  are  so  numerous  that  a  line  could 
not  be  drawn  in  any  direction  without  passing  through  some  bones.  In 
northern  Patagonia  the  red  deposit  is  bound  closely  to  an  overlying  gravel, 
containing  marine  forms  belonging  to  species  now  existing  on  the  coast, 
while  in  southern  Patagonia  marine  shells  occur  in  the  pampas  deposit  itself. 

Darwin  believed  that  this  pampas  material  was  deposited  within  a  vast 
estuary,  into  which  great  rivers  carried  from  the  surrounding  region  carcasses 
of  the  animals  whose  skeletons  were  entombed  in  muds  tranquilly  accumu- 
lating on  the  bottom.  All  conditions  go  to  show  that  the  mammalia  became 
extinct  after  the  sea  had  received  its  present  fauna,  and  there  is  nothing  to 
suggest  that  a  period  of  overwhelming  violence  swept  away  and  destroyed 
the  inhabitants  of  the  land;  everything  supports  the  contrary  belief.  The 
only  noteworthy  change  in  conditions  has  been  a  gradual  elevation  of  the 
continent;  but  that  was  not  enough  to  modify  the  climate  or  to  bring  about 
a  change  in  the  land  fauna. 

Several  of  the  important  genera  collected  by  Darwin  had  been  found 
in  North  America  long  prior  to  his  time.  This  similarity  of  the  Quaternary 
faunas  induced  him  to  speculate  on  the  causes  which  had  divided  the  Amer- 
can  continent  into  two  well-defined  and  somewhat  contrasting  zoological 
provinces.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  suggest  recent  elevation  of  the  Mexican 
platform  or,  more  probably,  recent  submergence  of  the  West  Indian  Archi- 
pelago as  a  conceivable  cause  of  this  separation.  It  seems  to  him  most 
probable  that  the  elephants,  the  mastodons,  the  horses  and  the  hollow- 
horned  ruminants  of  North  America  "migrated,  on  land  since  submerged 
near  Bering  Straits,  from  Siberia  into  North  America,  and  thence,  on  land 
since  submerged  in  the  West  Indies,  into  South  America,  where  for  a  time 
they  mingled  with  forms  characteristic  of  that  southern  continent  and  have 
since  become  extinct."  Had  this  American  Museum  of  Natural  History 
existed  in  Darwin's  day,  study  of  the  remarkable  exhibits  in  its  Mammal 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  25 

Hall  would  have  enabled  him  to  extend  his  list  of  extinct  forms  common  to 
both  continents;  and  possibly  he  might  have  anticipated  some  of  the  all- 
important  generalizations  for  which  the  world  is  indebted  to  the  former 
president  of  this  academy  who  now  is  president  of  the  museum. 

Nothing  in  South  America,  east  or  west,  escaped  Darwin;  from  glaciers 
to  peat  bogs,  from  earthquakes  to  climatal  variations,  everything  was  im- 
portant; but  what  impressed  him  most  on  both  sides  of  the  continent  were 
the  evidences  of  extremely  slow  secular  movement  in  the  earth's  cmst. 
This  was  the  preparation  for  that  study  of  the  coral  islands  which  resulted 
in  his  chief  contribution  to  philosophical  geology. 

Many  voyagers  prior  to  1833  had  observed  and  had  tried  to  account 
for  the  strange  atolls,  or  low  ring-like  coral  reefs,  each  inclosing  a  lagoon 
which  communicates  with  the  sea  by  a  narrow  channel;  but  Darwin  dis- 
covered other  forms  of  reefs  which  were  equally  perplexing.  Many  islets 
of  rock  are  fringed  by  coral  growth,  while  vast  barrier  reefs,  separated  from 
the  land  by  channels  of  varying  depth,  extend  at  times  for  hundreds  of  miles 
along  coasts.  All  explanations  by  previous  observers  were  defective,  as  they 
seemed  to  ignore  these  types  as  well  as  other  features,  not  less  important. 

Reef- making  corals  can  not  endure  exposure  to  the  air  and  they  can 
not  thrive  at  a  depth  of  more  than  20  fathoms,  so  that  their  vertical  range 
is  about  115  feet;  yet  hooks  and  anchors  brought  up  coral  rock  and  sand 
from  many  hundreds  of  feet  below  the  limit  of  growth;  in  a  great  number 
of  instances,  the  atolls  or  ring-like  reefs  are  mere  peaks  rising  with  abrupt 
slopes  from  "fathomless"  abysses.  Coral-bearing  areas  within  the  Indian 
and  Pacific  Oceans  are  of  vast  extent,  there  being  chains  of  archipelagos 
1,000  to  1,500  miles  long.  The  reefs  are  rudely  circular  or  elliptical  in  the 
islands,  but  are  linear  along  the  coasts;  in  the  one  case,  the  reef  incloses  a 
lagoon,  in  the  other,  a  lagoon-like  channel  separates  the  reef  from  the  coast. 
These  are  fundamental  elements  of  the  problem,  not  one  of  which  may  be 
neglected  in  the  solution.  A  clue  to  the  explanation  was  found  by  this  keen 
observer,  when  he  saw  an  islet  of  old  rock,  fringed  with  coral,  rising  from  the 
lagoon  of  an  atoll,  so  that  the  atoll-ring  resembled  in  many  respects  the 
barrier  reef  of  a  continent  and  the  lagoon  itself  resembled  the  lagoon-like 
channel  seen  on  the  Australian  and  other  coasts. 

Chamisso's  suggestion  that  coral  reefs  had  been  formed  on  banks  of 
sedimentary  material  seemed  wholly  incompetent  to  meet  the  conditions, 
for  the  areas  are  too  vast,  and  Darwin  was  compelled  to  believe  that  the 
atolls  rest  on  rocky  bases;  but  even  on  this  supposition,  it  appears  incredible 
that  peaks  of  several  great  mountain  chains  should  all  come  to  within  less 
than  180  feet  of  the  surface  and  that  not  one  rose  any  higher.  The  long 
study  in  South  America  had  prepared  him  to  seek  an  explanation  in  mobility 


26  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

of  the  earth's  crust ;  but  it  was  clear  that  elevation  could  not  bring  about  the 
conditions,  as  that  would  destroy  the  corals  themselves;  subsidence  alone 
can  account  for  the  phenomena.  And  thus  Darwin  presents  his  case: 

If  then  the  foundations  of  the  many  atolls  were  not  uplifted  into  the  requisite 
position,  they  must  of  necessity  have  subsided  into  it;  and  this  at  once  solves  every 
difficulty,  for  we  may  safely  infer  from  the  facts  given  in  the  last  chapter,  that  during 
a  subsidence  the  corals  would  be  favorably  circumstanced  for  building  up  their 
solid  framework  and  reaching  the  surface,  as  island  after  island  slowly  disappeared. 
Thus  areas  of  immense  extent  in  the  central  and  most  profound  parts  of  the  oceans 
might  become  interspersed  with  coral  islets,  none  of  which  would  rise  to  greater 
height  than  that  attained  by  detritus  heaped  up  by  the  sea,  and  nevertheless  they 
might  all  have  been  formed  by  corals  which  absolutely  require  for  their  growth  a  solid 

foundation  within  a  few  fathoms  of   the  surface The  rocky  bases    slowly 

and  successively  sank  beneath  the  level  of  the  sea,  while  corals  continued  to  grow 
upward. 

The  origin  of  the  ring  as  well  as  that  of  the  barrier  reef  seemed  to  be 
easily  explained  by  this  hypothesis.  The  corals  on  the  outer  side  of  the 
reef  grew  with  greater  rapidity  than  did  those  within,  as  the  supply  of  food 
is  constant;  those  on  the  inner  side  became  starved  and  eventually  the 
interior  growth  ceased,  and  the  lagoon  was  shallowed  by  wind-drifted 
material  from  the  shores. 

Darwin's  hypothesis  and  the  facts  on  which  it  was  based  have  become 
so  familiar  that  students  sometimes  express  surprise  that  so  much  praise 
has  been  awarded  to  the  author.  The  conditions  as  presented  in  his  dis- 
cussion are  so  clear  that  certainly  no  man  could  reach  any  other  conclusion. 
That  is  true,  but  it  is  true  only  because  Darwin  marshalled  his  facts  in  a 
manner  so  masterly;  in  any  event,  it  is  always  easy  to  do  a  thing,  when 
another  has  done  it  well  and  told  us  how.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that 
a  hypothesis  of  this  sort,  though  normal  enough  in  our  day,  was  very  ab- 
normal in  that  day;  indeed,  it  was  contrary  to  Darwin's  own  underlying 
conceptions,  for,  though  a  uniformitarian,  he  had  seen  many  phenomena 
which,  for  a  time,  made  him  only  a  halting  disciple.  Yet  his  hypothesis 
was  a  monumental  contribution  in  support  of  the  uniformitarian  doctrine, 
which,  under  the  leadership  of  Lyell,  was  gaining  sturdy  adherents.  That 
the  hypothesis  met  with  uncompromising  opposition  need  not  be  said.  The 
material  of  coral  origin  extended  to  vast  depths  alongside  of  the  islands,  in 
some  cases  apparently  to  4,000  feet.  The  upward  growth  of  the  reef  was 
known  to  be  extremely  slow.  If  the  subsidence  and  the  upward  growth  kept 
pace,  as  was  essential  to  the  hypothesis,  evidently  the  required  period, 
belonging  to  the  latest  portion  of  the  earth's  existence,  was  immensely  long. 
It  is  difficult  now  to  understand  how  great  moral  courage  was  needed  by 
the  man  who  published  such  a  doctrine;  sixty  years  ago,  the  educated  man 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  27 

of  Great  Britain  had  not  learned  to  distinguish  between  faith  and  pre- 
judice. 

This  effort  to  explain  the  origin  of  coral  reefs  has  been  regarded,  justly, 
as  Darwin's  especial  contribution  to  geology.  It  has  been  opposed  strenu- 
ously by  careful  students  during  the  last  twenty  years  and  even  now  it  is  a 
bone  of  contention;  but  the  most  strenuous  opponent  concedes  that  it  is 
logical  and  a  fair  induction  from  the  facts  as  then  known.  Be  it  true  or  not, 
be  it  a  competent  explanation  or  not,  no  matter.  In  influence  on  geology 
it  has  been  as  far-reaching  as  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  has  been  on 
biology.  It  involves  every  important  problem  in  dynamics  of  the  earth's 
crust;  in  testing  it,  men  have  been  led  into  paths  of  investigation,  which, 
but  for  Darwin,  might  still  be  untrodden.  The  influence  went  farther. 
The  hypothesis  was  presented  at  a  time  when  men's  minds  were  warped  by 
prejudice,  when  men  were  extremists,  when  too  many  were  defenders  of 
dogmas  in  science  and  too  few  were  searchers  after  truth.  Darwin's  dis- 
cussion was  a  model  of  frankness;  suggestions  offered  by  his  predecessors 
were  dealt  with  courteously;  he  searched  far  and  wide  for  objections  to  his 
own  suggestions,  and  when  objections  were  found,  he  stated  them  in  detail, 
concealing  nothing  and  urging  further  investigation.  His  conclusions 
were,  for  him,  merely  tabulations  of  observed  facts.  One  can  not  over- 
estimate the  importance  of  this  method;  it  was  a  chief  factor  in  changing 
the  tone  of  scientific  literature,  in  leading  to  replacement  of  subjective  by 
objective  modes  of  investigation. 

Darwin's  work  as  geologist  practically  ended  with  these  publications 
of  the  Beagle  results.  It  is  true  that  in  later  years  he  made  some  contribu- 
tions possessing  much  interest,  but  they  were  merely  incidental  to  studies 
in  other  directions ;  the  greater  part  of  his  long  life  was  devoted  to  biological 
problems.  At  the  same  time,  his  whole  mode  of  thinking  and  of  observing 
was  that  of  the  geologist,  so  that  if  one  were  treating  of  his  later  years  the 
topic  might  well  be  the  influence  of  geology  upon  Darwin.  In  his  later 
works,  one  finds  constantly  recurring  consideration  of  geological  conditions 
as  potent  factors  in  biological  change,  while  on  the  other  hand  he  emphasized 
the  influence  of  life  as  a  factor  in  bringing  about  geological  changes.  To 
him  nature  was  always  one;  and  he,  in  great  measure,  was  responsible  for 
the  broadness  of  view  characterizing  the  geologists  who  were  his  contem- 
poraries as  well  as  for  the  remarkable  change  in  attitude  of  the  community 
toward  scientific  discussion.  Nowadays,  when  workers  are  so  many  and 
knowledge  is  so  increased,  men  have  been  forced  into  narrow  lanes  of  in- 
vestigation; students,  perplexed  by  phenomena  within  their  limited  vision, 
too  often  think  little  and  know  less  of  what  neighbors  are  doing.  And  this 
must  continue  until  some  important  problems  have  been  solved,  at  least  in 
part,  and  some  positive  results  have  been  obtained  in  many  directions. 


28  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

Then  another  Darwin  will  come,  will  gather  loose  strands  floating  in  the 
wind  and  will  weave  from  them  a  new  system,  once  more  binding  nature 
studies  into  one  and  providing  a  safe  platform,  whence  men  may  start 
anew  to  fathom  the  unknown  by  means  of  the  known. 


DARWIN  AND  BOTANY. 
BY  DR.  NATHANIEL  LORD  BRITTON. 

Considering  the  fact  that  Charles  Darwin  disclaimed  the  title  of  botanist, 
his  contributions  to  the  knowledge  of  plant  life  and  its  phenomena  were 
certainly  extraordinary.  His  investigations  extended  over  a  great  range 
of  topics,  at  one  time  or  another  practically  covering  the  whole  field  of 
botanical  research.  In  repeatedly  stating  that  he  was  not  a  botanist,  he 
evidently  meant  to  imply  that  he  was  not  a  systematist,  and  it  is  true  that  his 
knowledge  of  plant  taxonomy  was  the  least  of  his  scientific  acquirements. 
In  his  first  letter  to  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  written  in  1855,  which  was  the  commence- 
ment of  a  long  correspondence,  he  almost  apologized  for  asking  questions! 
During  that  year  he  became  keenly  interested,  however,  in  knowing  more 
about  the  kinds  of  plants  growing  wild  in  the  vicinity  of  his  home,  and  in  a 
letter  to  Dr.  Hooker  he  complains  about  the  dreadful  difficulty  of  naming 
plants,  though  he  apparently  became  quite  enthusiastic  in  this  pursuit  and 
advised  Dr.  Hooker,  "If  ever  you  catch  quite  a  beginner  and  want  to  give 
him  a  taste  of  botany,  tell  him  to  make  a  perfect  list  of  some  little  field  or 
wood."  The  facts  just  stated  seem  to  indicate  the  extent  of  his  taxonomic 
studies.  He  accepted,  for  the  most  part,  the  names  of  plants  which  he 
studied  from  the  determinations  of  others. 

Darwin  was  attracted  to  observations  of  natural  objects  as  a  young 
boy  and  he  early  considered  plants;  his  juvenile  collections  were  ento- 
mological, and  his  earlier  investigations  were  mainly  zoological  and  geolo- 
gical. As  a  pupil  of  Professor  Henslow  at  Cambridge  University  he  at- 
tended botanical  lectures  and  took  part  in  field  excursions;  he  greatly 
enjoyed  the  field  work,  and  from  it  his  inspiration  for  investigation  was 
doubtless  derived. 

As  naturalist  of  the  voyage  around  the  world  of  the  ship  Beagle  (1831- 
1836)  his  collections  of  plants  made  in  South  America  and  on  the  islands  of 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  his  observations  upon  the  botanical  features  of  the 
countries  visited,  contributed  greatly  to  the  knowledge  of  the  flora  of  those 
regions.  They  were  extensively  utilized  by  Dr.  Hooker  in  his  "Flora 
Antarctica"  and  in  his  "Flora  of  the  Galapagos  Archipelago,"  as  well  as 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION 

by  other  authors  in  various  contributions, 
is  preserved  in  the  museum  of 
assiduously  at  times  durin 
having  brought  hom 

.ii'  liabit  the  Gala 

Islands  and  '•'l^H^^V^1  I  Q^^^B^Ww  to  science  were  represented 

in  his  jGralafoaijK  I  jp^^dthe  extraordinary  distribution  of 

species  or  raoes^^^^HHP^5iaAds  of  this  group,  many  of  them  inhabiting 
only  a  single  islt^Pfmahe  laid  the  foundation  for  all  subsequent  study 
of  insular  floras.  The  narrative  of  observations  and  experiences  during 
this  memorable  voyage  is  replete  with  interesting  facts  and  suggestions 
concerning  plants,  and  his  conclusion  that  "Nothing  can  be  more  improving 
to  a  young  naturalist  than  a  journey  in  distant  countries,"  is  one  that  should 
be  reiterated  by  all  teachers  of  natural  science,  and  such  experience  should 
be  sought  by  all  students  who  propose  engaging  in  investigation.  Darwin 
is  commemorated  in  botanical  taxonomy  by  many  species  named  in  his 
honor.  The  beautiful  barberry,  Berberis  Darwinii  of  Hooker,  native  of 
Chiloe,  is  occasionally  seen  in  cultivation.  Darwinia,  an  Australian  genus 
of  the  myrtle  family,  named  by  Rudge  in  1813,  commemorates  his  grand- 
father, Erasmus  Darwin. 

The  beginnings  of  Darwin's  theory  of  descent  of  animals  and  plants 
from  preexistent  species,  with  modifications,  were  made  during  the  voyage 
of  the  Beagle,  and  from  the  year  after  his  return  to  England,  when,  he  tells 
us  he  opened  the  first  note-book  on  the  subject.  For  twenty-two  years  he 
was  interrogating  gardeners  and  breeders,  botanists  and  zoologists,  and 
diligently  observing  plants  and  animals.  He  first  thought  of  publishing 
on  the  theory  of  descent  in  1839,  but  delayed  for  twenty  years.  During  the 
studies  which  led  up  to  the  publication,  in  1859,  of  "The  Origin  of  Species 
by  Means  of  Natural  Selection,  or  the  Preservation  of  Favored  Races  in  the 
Struggle  for  Life,"  Darwin  closely  observed  a  great  number  of  wild  and 
cultivated  plants,  with  reference  to  variation  in  nature  and  under  domestica- 
tion, the  struggle  for  existence  due  to  competition  for  food  and  sunlight, 
the  facts  of  geographic  distribution,  the  succession  of  plant  life  on  the  earth 
as  indicated  by  the  fossils  of  successive  geologic  periods,  and  a  great  range 
of  other  facts  and  phenomena.  The  recorded  observations  of  other  botanists 
were  also  freely  utilized  and  discussed.  Nearly  all  the  chapters  of  this 
epoch-making  work  contain  conclusions  drawn  from  his  own  botanical 
observations.  He  was  especially  impressed  by  the  divergent  views  of 
different  botanists  relative  to  the  taxonomic  treatment  of  highly  polymorphic 
genera  such  as  Hieracium  (hawk-weed),  Rubus  (blackberry),  Quercus  and 
Rosa,  and  he  employed  this  consideration  to  great  advantage  in  his  argu- 


NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

ent.     Rudimentary  organs  were  considered 


\  ex-played  by  Darwin  as  vestiges  of  structures 

which  werfi^^^^^Hl^H     I  in  farliertj^ees  of  its  existence.     The  facts 
of  geographic  7!r%vil>i  it  inn  \\  linfei     ,-  Ix-irii!.^  on  the  theory 

—  y  of  former 

land  connections  of  present  existing  Tity  <JLC<  oum 

ing  for  many  features  of   ovouT.-ipiiu-  •   ultimately 

agreed  with  this  theory  to  some  extent.     I! 

means  by  which  seeds  are  transported  over  great  distarre^^^^^K)  inquired 
into  the  vitality  of  seeds. 

The  title  of  the  "Origin"  was  a  subject  of  considerable  doubt  in  his 
mind,  and  in  1857,  two  years  before  it  was  printed,  he  had  proposed  to  call 
it  "Natural  Selection."  The  title  "Origin  of  Species  by  Means  of  Natural 
Selection"  is,  if  taken  literally,  somewhat  misleading  and  has  occasioned 
considerable  discussion.  The  subtitle  —  "Or  the  Preservation  of  Favored 
Races  in  the  Struggle  for  Life  "  —  is  a  more  accurate  statement  of  his  theory. 
On  November  23,  1856,  he  wrote  to  Dr.  Hooker: 

The  formation  of  a  strong  variety,  or  species,  I  look  at  as  almost  wholly  due  to 
the  selection  of  what  may  be  incorrectly  called  chance  variations.  Again,  the 
slight  differences  selected,  by  which  a  race  or  species  is  at  last  formed,  stand,  as  I 
think  can  be  shown  in  the  far  more  important  relation  to  its  associates  than  to  external 
conditions. 

Darwin's  great  contribution  to  the  subject  of  evolution  was  the  incon- 
trovertible proof  adduced  by  him  that  living  species  are  modified  descendants 
of  preexisting  species,  and  that  the  modifications  are  brought  about  by 
natural  causes.  His  observations  led  him  to  the  conclusion  that  the  modi- 
fications were  all  minute,  gradual  and  cumulative.  We  know  that  they  may 
also  be  considerable  and  abrupt  and  that  they  are  cumulative  because  favora- 
ble changes  are  preserved. 

How,  then,  do  the  modifications  or  primordial  variations,  either  large 
or  small,  arise?  Is  variation  an  innate  essential  quality,  or  is  it  induced 
by  external  environmental  factors?  Proof  of.  environmental  agencies 
having  at  least  something  to  do  with  it  in  plants  seems  to  be  accumulating, 
as  the  experimental  work  carried  on  by  MacDougal  and  by  Gager  at  the 
New  York  Botanical  Garden  appears  to  imply. 

I  think  that  we  may  now  safely  outline  the  methods  of  formation  of 
species  somewhat  as  follows:  Through  causes  which  are  not  yet  at  all  well 
known,  but  by  means  of  which  agencies  external  to  the  germ-cells  certainly 
may  have  a  part,  the  offspring  of  a  plant  grown  from  seed  differ  more  or 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  31 

less  from  the  parent  (variation).  The  thus  modified  offspring,  subjected 
to  natural  selection,  ultimately  perish  if  they  are  unadapted,  but  survive 
if  they  are  adapted  to  their  surroundings.  Repetitions  of  this  process 
finally  bring  the  descendants  of  plants  to  differ  materially  from  their  ancestors 
(evolution).  The- end  of  the  process  seems  to  be  the  development  of  organ- 
isms which  are  little  or  not  at  all  subject  to  variation  (monotypic  genera). 
All  genera  of  plants  containing  a  large  number  of  species  are  evidently 
subject  to  continued  variation,  and  their  species  and  faces  almost  defy 
classification.  Just  what  part  the  phenomena  of  hybridism  take  in  the 
final  result  is  not  clear,  but  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  they  are  evidently 
unnecessary,  because  great  groups,  whole  orders,  in  fact,  of  the  fungi,  are 
devoid  of  sexuality,  and  hybridism  is  therefore  impossible  among  them; 
yet  they  are  subject  to  variation  like  other  plants  and  quite  as  difficult  to 
classify. 

Observations  on  insectivorous  plants  occupied  Darwin  at  intervals 
from  1860  until  the  publication  of  his  volume  on  that  subject  in  1875.  He 
commenced  with  the  round-leaved  sundew  (Drosera  rotundifolia)  while 
staying  at  Ashdown  Forest,  and  was  soon  intensely  interested  in  the  exqui- 
site sensitiveness  of  the  leaf-glands  to  nitrogenous  substances.  His  studies 
were  continued  over  most  of  the  plants  of  the  sundew  family,  and  to  others 
known  to  entrap  insects  or  other  small  animals.  He  discovered  that  the 
leaves  of  Drosera  and  of  Dioncea  secreted  a  ferment  when  supplied  with 
various  kinds  of  nitrogenous  food  and  he  closely  observed  the  movements 
of  their  glands  and  tentacles  and  recorded  them  in  detail.  Experiments 
were  also  made  on  these  plants  with  a  great  variety  of  non-nitrogenous 
suhstances.  Darwin  pointed  out  the  remarkable  parallelism  between  the 
digestive  powers  of  the  secretions  of  the  Droseraceae  and  those  of  the  gastric 
juices  of  animals.  The  sacs  of  the  aquatic  bladder-worts  (Uiricularia)  and 
the  leaves  of  butter-worts  (Pinguicula)  were  also  closely  studied.  His 
book  is  replete  with  records  of  careful  observations  and  ingenious  deductions. 
Nepenthes  had  already  been  shown  by  Dr.  Hooker  to  secrete  digestive 
fluids  in  its  pitcher-like  leaves,  and  Sarracenia  was  suspected  of  similar 
activity  by  Darwin  and  by  others,  although  he  did  not  regard  this  as  proven. 

As  early  as  1838  or  1839  Darwin  was  attracted  to  observe  the  processes 
of  pollination  and  noticed  the  dimorphic  flowers  of  Linum  flavum.  He"  had 
concluded  at  that  time  that  cross-fertilization  was  potent  in  holding  species 
stable  and  constant.  He  obtained  a  great  deal  of  information  on  this  topic 
in  1841  by  reading  Sprengle's  "Entdeckte  Geheimniss  der  Natur,"  which 
stimulated  him  to  continued  investigations  during  summers  and  he  became 
especially  interested  in  the  methods  of  pollination  of  the  wild  orchids  growing 
about,  his  home.  This  study  of  pollination  of  orchids  resulted  in  the  publi- 


32  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

cation,  in  1862,  of  his  book  on  that  subject,  and  in  it  his  detailed  observations 
are  recorded.  Some  of  his  closest  observational  work  was  done  on  this 
subject  of  cross-pollination,  and  he  examined  a  great  many  species  and 
grew  thousands  of  plants  from  seed,  reaching  the  broad  generalization  that 
cross-fertilization  is  beneficial  to  a  species  and  self-fertilization  is  injurious. 
The  phenomena  do  not  now,  however,  appear  to  have  as  important  a  relation 
to  evolution  as  they  were  formerly  supposed  to  have,  and  Darwin  later 
expressed  regret  that  he  had  not  given  more  attention  to  the  processes  of 
self-fertilization. 

His  interest  in  showing  that  cross-fertilization  was  beneficial  led  him  to 
investigate  closely  the  various  structural  features  of  flowers  which  necessitate 
this  process  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  such  as  dicecism,  moncecism,  poly- 
gamy and  heterostyly;  his  observations  and  speculations  are  presented  in 
the  volume  entitled  "Different  Forms  of  Flowers  and  Plants  of  the  Same 
Species,"  published  in  1877.  He  records  that  making  out  the  meaning  of 
heterostyled  flowrers  gave  him  very  great  pleasure.  A  chapter  of  the  book 
is  devoted  to  cleistogamic  flowers,  which  are  necessarily  self  fertilized  and 
produce  seed  abundantly.  This  work  is  largely  a  revision  and  rearrangement 
of  several  papers  previously  published  in  the  Journal  of  the  Linncean  Society. 

"The  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication,"  Darwin's 
largest  work,  appeared  in  1868,  published  in  two  volumes.  As  bearing  on 
this  topic,  he  had  studied,  among  plants,  for  many  years,  the  cereal  grains, 
garden  vegetables,  edible  fruits,  ornamental  trees  and  ornamental  flowers. 
In  the  preface  he  again  discusses  natural  selection  and  defines  it  as  "This 
preservation,  during  the  battle  for  life,  of  varieties  which  possess  any  ad- 
vantage in  structure,  constitution  or  instinct,"  noting  that  Herbert  Spencer 
had  well  termed  the  same  process  "The  Survival  of  the  Fittest."  But  the 
bulk  of  the  work  is  given  to  the  consideration  of  selection  by  man  —  arti- 
ficial selection,  by  which  races  useful  to  us,  economically  or  esthetically, 
have  been  preserved  and  modified,  some  of  them  having  originated  in  very 
remote  times  and  been  taken  advantage  of  by  uncivilized  man.  A  chapter 
is  devoted  to  the  phenomena  of  bud-variation,  in  which  many  cases  of 
branches  of  plants  different  in  one  respect  or  another  from  other  branches 
on  the  same  plant  are  described  in  detail.  Many  of  these  have  been  taken 
advantage  of  by  horticulturists  for  the  propagation  of  valuable  races.  He 
did  not  reach  any  definite  conclusion  as  to  the  cause  of  these  interesting 
occurrences;  but  recently  acquired  knowledge  of  mutation  seems  to  indi- 
cate that  they  are  of  that  category,  differing  from  seminal  mutations  in 
that  a  cell  in  the  axil  of  a  leaf  is  affected  rather  than  a  germ-cell.  In  these 
volumes  we  find  Darwin's  most  detailed  discussion  of  heredity,  of  variability 
and  of  hybridism  and  the  last  chapter  outlines  his  provisional  hypothesis 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  33 

of  pangenesis,  an  ingenious  supposition,  applying  to  living  matter  the  general 
features  of  the  atomic  theory,  with  an  additional  inherent  power  of  repro- 
duction of  the  atoms  or  "gemmules"  as  he  termed  the  hypothetical  ultimate 
particles. 

The  movements  of  plants  and  of  their  various  organs  were  also  studied 
by  Darwin  for  many  years.  His  first  essay  on  this  topic  appeared  in  1865 
and  ten  years  later  he  revised  and  enlarged  it  as  a  book  under  the  title 
"The  Movements  and  Habits  of  Climbing  Plants,"  using,  as  always,  not 
only  his  own  detailed  and  extensive  observations,  but  also  the  published 
writings  of  other  botanists,  among  them  the  paper  on  tendrils  by  Hugo 
de  Vries,  who  was  destined  subsequently  to  throw  such  a  flood  of  light  on 
the  phenomena  of  variation.  Darwin  grouped  climbing  plants  into  twiners, 
leaf-climbers,  tendril-bearers,  hook-climbers  and  root- climbers.  He  main- 
tained that  the  climbing  habit  has  been  developed  to  enable  vines  to  reach 
the  light  and  free  air;  tropical  forests  show  conclusively  that  this  is  the  case. 
He  showed  that  circumnutation,  the  bending  of  growing  tips  successively 
to  all  points  of  the  compass,  is  a  general  phenomenon  among  flowering 
plants,  and  he  thought  it  of  high  importance  to  them.  The  sensitiveness 
of  tendrils  to  external  influences  interested  him  deeply,  and  he  made  many 
original  experiments  upon  them.  Following  the  subject  much  further  he 
published  in  1880  the  work  entitled  "The  Power  of  Movement  in  Plants," 
a  treatise  abounding  in  records  of  original  observations  on  seedlings  and 
parts  of  mature  plants,  including  further  studies  of  circumnutation,  of  the 
sensitiveness  of  plants  to  light  and  to  other  forces  and  of  the  phenomena  of 
geotropism  and  apogeotropism,  which  he  regarded  as  modified  phenomena 
of  circumnutation. 

The  value  of  the  impulse  given  by  Darwin  to  botanical  investigation 
in  all  its  branches  is  beyond  estimation;  his  power  of  exact  observation 
and  record  has  seldom  been  equaled  and  certainly  never  excelled;  his 
deductions  were  highly  philosophical,  and  most  of  them  have  stood  the 
test  of  thirty  years'  inquiry  and  criticism;  he  was  searching  for  truth  and 
his  absolute  honesty  in  research  is  plainly  evidenced  by  his  repeated  criticism 
of  his  own  conclusions. 

The  immense  number  of  plant  species  which  had  been  described  and 
named,  and  the  lack  of  any  complete  index  to  them  led  Darwin  to  provide 
in  his  will  for  complete  enumeration  of  the  names  of  published  species  of 
flowering  plants.  This  great  work  was  prepared  at  the  library  of  the  Royal 
Gardens,  Kew,  England,  and  published  in  1895  in  four  large  quarto  volumes, 
to  which  several  supplements  have  since  been  added.  This  "Index 
Kewensis"  is  a  great  boon  to  all  investigators,  and  is  quite  indispensable 
to  those  who  have  to  take  plant  names  into  consideration. 


34  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

DARWIN  AND  ZOOLOGY. 
BY  DR.  HERMOX  C.  BUMPUS. 

This  is  an  assembly  composed  substantially  of  members  and  friends  of 
the  New  York  Academy  of  Sciences,  united  to  do  homage  to  one  whose 
genius  has  been  long  felt  in  our  meetings,  and  whose  influence  is  now  recog- 
nized in  every  field  of  intellectual  endeavor.  The  example  of  Darwin's 
precision  in  observing,  of  his  wisdom  in  interpreting  and  of  his  truthfulness 
in  recording  the  phenomena  of  nature  has  transformed  zoology  —  the 
subject  assigned  to  me  —  from  prosaic  description  to  acute  speculation,  from 
a  merely  interesting  study  to  an  aggressive  science. 

This  change  took  place  in  an  incredibly  short  space  of  time,  and  it  may 
be  worth  while,  on  an  occasion  such  as  this,  to  examine  the  condition  of 
scientific  academies  and  similar  organizations  in  America  at  the  time  of 
the  publication  of  the  "Origin  of  Species,"  to  note  the  first  center  of  appre- 
ciative acceptance  and  to  trace  the  spread  of  the  belief  in  Darwinism  as  it 
betrayed  itself  in  the  publications  of  the  time. 

Fifty  years  ago  there  wrere  in  America  five  leading  centers  of  organized 
scientific  activity. 

In  Philadelphia  were  the  American  Philosophical  Society,  founded 
by  Franklin  and  then  well  along  in  its  second  century  of  "promoting  useful 
knowledge,"  and  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences,  approaching  its  semi- 
centennial. 

In  Boston  were  the  adolescent  Boston  Society  of  Natural  History,  ap- 
proaching its  thirtieth  birthday,  and  the  mature  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences,  founded  in  1780. 

In  New  Haven  was  the  Connecticut  Academy,  founded  in  1786. 

In  Washington,  although  the  National  Institution  for  the  Promotion 
of  Science  (founded  in  1840)  and  the  Smithsonian  Institution  had  been 
publishing  for  eleven  years,  men  of  science  apparently  did  not  unite  in  an 
academic  way  until  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Washington  was  organized 
in  1871.  Even  the  National  Academy  was  not  incorporated  until  1863, 
four  years  after  the  announcement  of  the  "Origin  of  Species." 

In  New  York,  this  academy  (then  called  the  Lyceum  of  Natural  History) 
was  meeting  at  Fourteenth  Street,  at  a  point  now  occupied  by  the  head- 
quarters of  Tammany  Hall.  Of  those  then  attending  its  meetings,  but  one 
now  remains. 

The  dominant  mind  at  Philadelphia  was  that  of  Leidy,  thirty-six  years 
of  age.  Cope  was  a  boy  of  nineteen.  In  Washington,  were  Joseph  Henry, 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  35 

sixty-two;  Bache,  sixty-three;  Baird,  thirty-six,  and  others  attached  to  the 
Smithsonian  Institution,  and  the  great  government  surveys.  Baird  was 
often  a  contributor  to  the  publications  of  the  New  York  Lyceum  of  Natural 
History. 

In  New  York  was  Torrey,  a  man  of  sixty-three,  and  among  others  two 
young  men,  Theodore  Nicholas  Gill  —  the  senior  member  of  this  academy 

—  and  Daniel  Giraud  Elliot,  now  honoring  this  museum  with  his  presence 

—  both  born  in  New  York,  and  both  in  their  early  twenties.     Not  only 
have  these  two  —  early  identified  with  the  scientific  publications  of  this 
academy  —  witnessed  the  change  that  has  taken  place  during  the  past  fifty 
years,  but  their  long  series  of  contributions  to  science  admirably  illustrate 
the  strange  power  that  has  been  exerted  upon  zoological  work  in  general, 
and  descriptive  zoology  in  particular,  by  him  who  came  into  being  one 
hundred  years  ago. 

In  New  Haven  were  James  Dwight  Dana,  forty-six,  Daniel  C.  Gilman, 
twenty-eight,  and  the  Sillimans. 

In  Boston,  were  Agassiz,  adored  by  the  people  —  preeminent  among 
teachers  —  the  studious  lovable  Gray,  at  one  time  (1836)  librarian  of  this 
academy,  and  Jeffries  Wyman.  Both  Agassiz  and  Gray  were  about  the 
age  of  Darwin.  Jeffries  Wyman  was  a  few  years  their  junior;  of  him 
Lowell  has  written: 

He  widened  knowledge  and  escaped  the  praise 
He  toiled  for  science,  not  to  draw  men's  gaze. 

Under  the  influence  of  these,  Agassiz,  Gray,  Jeffries  Wyman,  there 
gathered  at  Cambridge,  at  about  this  time,  what  we  would  now  informally 
and  affectionately  call  "a  bunch  of  boys."  Shaler,  eighteen;  Verrill  (who 
has  come  down  from  New  Haven  to  be  with  us  this  afternoon)  and  Packard, 
twenty;  Morse,  Hyatt  and  Allen  —  our  Dr.  Allen  — twenty-one;  Scudder, 
twenty-two. 

Of  the  five  centers  of  scientific  activity,  youth  was  certainly  the  charac- 
teristic of  the  school  at  Boston.  It  is  therefore  safe  to  predict  that  the  germ 
of  the  new  truth  in  biological  science  would  find  a  more  favorable  medium 
in  Boston  than  here  in  New  York  or  farther  south. 

The  infection  was  immediate,  indeed  "  prr-immediate."  The  period 
of  incubation  extended  over  about  ten  years,  ending  in  an  acute  epidemic 
from  1871-1876,  which  affected  lyceums,  associations  and  academies  in- 
discriminately. Convalescence  then  began,  since  which  the  American 
body-scientific  has  enjoyed  good  health  and  has  shown  many  periods  of 
remarkable  growth. 


36  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

The  "Origin  of  Species"  was  published  in  London  late  in  November, 
1859.  The  following  month,  Asa  Gray,  long  intimately  acquainted  with 
Darwin,  and  anxious  that  Americans  should  see  promptly  the  significance 
of  the  new  theory,  wrote  for  Sillimaris  Journal  a  review  of  the  book,  before 
a  single  copy  of  the  "Origin"  had  reached  this  country.  He  predicted 
that  the  work  would  produce  great  discussion  —  it  did.  A  copy  arrived, 
it  was  carefully  reviewed,  but  before  the  review  could  be  gotten  through  the 
press,  a  second  edition  was  announced,  and  within  three  months  two  Ameri- 
can editions  were  advertised. 

Gray  gave  his  first  review  in  December.  In  January,  Professors  Agassiz, 
Parsons  and  Rogers  are  recorded  as  having  discussed  the  "Origin  and 
Distribution  of  Species"  at  a  meeting  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences  on  Beacon  Street.  Gray  was  present.  In  February,  Agassiz 
began  his  open  opposition  to  the  theory  of  Darwin,  stating  at  the  Boston 
Society  of  Natural  History  that,  while  Darwin  was  one  of  the  best  naturalists 
in  England,  his  great  knowledge  and  experience  had  been  brought  to  the 
support  of  an  ingenious  but  fanciful  theory.  In  these  discussions  Professor 
Rogers  valiantly  upheld  Darwin's  views.  In  March,  Agassiz  continued  to 
oppose  Darwin,  and  in  April,  Gray  and  Parsons  made  their  reply.  In  May, 
they  were  at  it  again.  Then  followed  the  admirable  essay  of  Parsons,  Pro- 
fessor of  Law  at  Harvard,  and  the  unfortunate  advance  sheets  of  the  third 
volume  of  Agassiz's  "Contributions."  Then  came  Gray's  Atlantic  Monthly 
articles,  and  thus  ended  the  first  year. 

Among  the  records  of  the  learned  societies  of  New  York,  Philadelphia 
and  Washington,  I  can  find  nothing  to  indicate  that  there  was  any  particular 
interest  in  the  disturbances  that  were  going  on  in  and  about  Boston.  Pro- 
fessor Dana,  easily  the  dominant  figure  in  science  at  New  Haven,  was  in 
poor  health  and  out  of  the  country,  but  it  was  generally  considered  that  his 
intensely  idealistic  views  would  probably  have  prevented  him  from  accepting 
a  theory  that  was  felt  by  many  to  be  grossly  materialistic.  The  infection 
therefore  was  local  and  remained  local  about  Boston  for  a  full  decade. 

In  1861  Agassiz  doubtless  discussed  the  matter  before  the  National 
Academy  in  a  paper  on  the  "Individuality  of  Animals,"  but  I  have  been 
unable  to  find  a  copy  of  the  paper. 

In  1863  Jeffries  "Wyman,  in  his  review  of  Owen's  monograph  on  the 
"Aye-aye"  gave  inference  of  his  adherence  to  the  theories  of  Darwin,  and 
indicated  the  impossibility  of  there  being  any  neutral  ground. 

In  1865  Morse  came  to  New  York  from  Salem  to  be  the  guest  of  this 
academy,  but  the  formal  paper  that  he  presented  did  not  contain  even  a 
remote  allusion  to  the  discussions  that  were  going  on  in  what  was  then  con- 
sidered America's  educational  center. 


ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES  37 

In  1867  Hyatt's  paper  on  "Parallelism"  appeared.  This  I  believe  to 
be  the  first  distinctly  evolutionary  contribution  from  the  zoological  side. 
In  this  year,  1867,  Professor  Xewberry,  later  and  for  twenty-three  years  the 
president  of  this  academy,  delivered  his  address  at  the  Burlington  meeting 
of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  betraying  in 
this  a  singular  nobleness  of  character  toward  those  to  whose  advanced  views 
he  felt  that  the  scientific  world  could  not  entirely  subscribe,  and  admirably 
illustrating  what  he  interpreted  to  be  the  prevailing  opinion  as  shown  by  the 
following  quotation: 

Although  this  Darwinian  hypothesis  is  looked  upon  by  many  as  striking  at  the 
root  of  all  vital  faith,  and  is  the  bete  noire  of  all  those  good  men  who  deplore  and  con- 
demn the  materialistic  tendency  of  modern  science,  still  the  purity  of  life  of  the 
author  of  the  "Origin  of  Species,"  his  enthusiastic  devotion  to  the  study  of  truth, 
the  industry  and  acumen  which  have  marked  his  researches,  the  candor  and  caution 
with  which  his  suggestions  have  been  made,  all  combine  to  render  the  obloquy  and 
scorn  with  which  they  have  been  received  in  many  quarters,  peculiarly  unjust  and 
in  bad  taste. 

This  was  also  the  first  year  of  the  American  Naturalist,  edited,  by  those 
four  pupils  of  Agassiz  —  Packard,  Morse,  Hyatt  and  Putnam  —  of  whom 
two  are  still  spared.  The  introduction  of  the  charming  first  volume  of  this 
characteristic  American  publication  is  sufficient  proof  that  at  the  time  of  its 
issue  even  the  younger  men  felt  that  there  were  two  distinct  schools  of  thought 
relative  to  the  "Origin  of  Species."  Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  in- 
troduction will  remember  that  it  is  illuminated  with  one  of  Morse's  inimitable 
sketches,  a  snail  peering  through  a  binocular  microscope,  symbolical,  doubt- 
less, of  the  slowness  of  perception  of  those  who  clung  to  this  archaic  instru- 
ment and  possibly  also  of  those  who  clung  to  archaic  ideas. 

The  following  year,  1868,  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Phila- 
delphia, which  in  1860  had  elected  Darwin  to  membership,  published  the 
first  important  direct  contribution  to  the  subject  of  evolution  made  by  one 
not  directly  under  the  influence  of  the  Boston  academies.  This  contribution, 
"On  the  Origin  of  Genera,"  was  made  by  Cope,  who  for  several  years  had 
been  submitting  papers  to  the  academy  of  a  descriptive  and  semi-speculative 
character,  and  largely  dealing  with  the  classification  of  reptiles.  I  believe 
that  I  am  perfectly  safe  in  saying  that  no  academy  in  America  has  ever 
published  a  paper  that  reflects  more  to  its  credit  than  this  extraordinary 
essay  of  Cope.  It  is  apologetically  issued  as  a  fragment,  but  in  it  there  is 
shown  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  anatomical  detail  that  is  almost  super- 
natural, an  independence  of  thought  that  is  extraordinary,  a  power  of  analysis 
that  stuns  the  reader,  an  estimate  of  the  weak  and  the  strong  points  of  the 
Darwinian  theory  that  is  masterly,  an  agility  of  logic  that  marked  its  author 


38  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

as  a  dangerous  antagonist,  an  energy  to  reach  the  truth,  and  an  impetuosity 
to  convince  others  of  truth,  that  was  prophetic,  indeed,  that  was  completely 
demonstrative  of  pent-up  mental  power  which  must  have  been  most  disturb- 
ing to  those  of  his  academy  who  had  nestled  down  into  positions  of  com- 
fortable intellectuality. 

We  now  enter  upon  five  years  of  acute  activity. 

On  December  15,  1871,  Cope  attended  a  meeting  of  the  American 
Philosophical  Society,  and  presented  his  paper  on  "The  Method  of  Creation 
of  Organic  Forms."  In  a  fortnight  a  reply  was  given,  which  began  with  a 
quotation  from  Job:  "I  am  a  brother  to  dragons  and  a  companion  to  owls," 
and  continued  for  several  pages  in  attempted  explanation  and  demonstration 
of  the  falsity  of  Darwin's  theories,  and  ended  with  the  author's  conviction 
that  the  only  good  that  can  come  from  these  theories  is  the  fact  that  they 
must  bring  about  their  own  defeat.  Cope  replied  immediately  and  was 
then  replied  to,  and  so  on.  But  why  follow  the  discussion  ? 

The  spell  was  being  felt  even  farther  south.  Within  two  months  of  the 
date  of  its  founding,  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Washington  listened  to  a 
paper  by  'Professor  Gill,  in  which  it  was  stated  that  if  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion was  accepted  at  all,  it  must  involve  man. 

This  was  also  the  date  of  Dr.  Allen's  paper  on  the  "  Geographical  Varia- 
tion of  North  American  Birds,"  a  philosophical  as  well  as  descriptive  article, 
an  important  contribution  to  the  then  scant  literature  of  distribution,  a 
paper  which  established  a  distinct  method  of  zoological  research  that  has 
reflected  the  highest  credit  on  its  author  and  on  the  institutions  with  which 
he  has  been  connected. 

It  was  also  in  this  year  that  Morse  published  his  paper  on  "Adaptive 
Coloration." 

In  January,  1872,  the  New  York  Academy  made  its  first  direct  contribu- 
tion to  the  subject  of  evolution  by  publishing  a  brief  paper  on  the  "Carpus 
and  Tarsus  of  Birds."  I  hope  that  Professor  Morse,  now  forty-five  years  a 
member  of  this  academy,  is  present  at  this  gathering,  for  the  fifty  years  that 
have  passed  since  the  appearance  of  the  "Origin  of  Species"  exactly  syn- 
chronize with  the  period  of  his  devotion  to  the  principles  enunciated  therein. 
If,  among  the  volumes  of  this  academy  from  1859-1876,  one  binding 
shows  more  signs  of  use  than  the  others,  take  down  the  book,  and  you  will 
find  that  it  opens  to  this  article  by  Professor  Morse;  a  contribution  to  zoology, 
to  comparative  anatomy,  to  embryology  and  to  the  theory  of  evolution. 
It  is  a  refreshing  spot,  but  somewhat  out  of  place  in  an  arid  expanse  of 
descriptions  of  new  species  and  revised  classifications. 

Another  paper  issued  by  the  academy  in  1872,  and  characteristic  of  the 
new  thought  of  the  time,  was  by  Benj.  M.  Martin  on  the  "Unity  of  the 
General  Forces  of  Nature,"  but  this  was  physical  rather  than  biological. 


DARWIN  MEMORIAL  CELEBRATION  39 

If  one  were  forced  to  accept  the  presidential  addresses  of  the  American 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  as  indicative  of  the  advance- 
ment of  science  in  American  associations,  the  address  of  1873,  delivered 
by  one  who  said  he  thought  that  natural  selection  had  died  with  Lamarck, 
would  be  .sadly  misleading.  He  writes : 

In  Darwin  we  have  one  of  those  philosophers  whose  great  knowledge  of  animal 
and  vegetable  life  is  transcended  only  by  his  imagination.  In  fact,  he  is  to  be 
regarded  more  as  a  metaphysician  with  a  highly-wrought  imagination  than  as  a 
scientist. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  gloom  that  anticipated  the  dawn. 

Although  in  1874  Dr.  Elsberg,  in  a  "  Contribution  to  the  Doctrine  of 
Evolution,"  addressed  this  academy  (and  also  the  American  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science),  in  favor  of  the  principles  of  Darwin, 
although  Cope  continued  to  sustain  his  earlier  contentions,  and  general 
workers  were  beginning  to  make  original  observations  in  favor  of  the  princi- 
ples of  organic  descent,  the  reviewers  of  the  deliberations  of  scientific  gather- 
ings gave  little  promise  of  anything  like  a  general  acceptance  of  the  beliefs 
in  which  we  are  interested. 

In  1875,  the  retiring  president  of  the  American  Association  said: 

I  fear  that  the  unhappy  spirit  of  contention  still  survives,  and  that  there  are  a 
few  who  fight  for  victory  rather  than  for  the  truth. 

One  of  the  vice-presidents  at  this  meeting  declined  to  "enter  on  the  vast 
field  of  discussion ....  opened  up  by  Darwin  and  others,"  and  resolved  to 
avoid  the  use  of  the  word  "evolution,"  "as  this  has  recently  been  employed 
in  so  many  senses  as  to  have  become  nearly  useless  for  any  scientific  purpose." 

Thus  closed  five  years  of  struggle. 

The  year  1876,  the  centennial  of  political  independence  in  America, 
marked  also  the  dawrn  of  intellectual  independence  and  scientific  freedom. 
It  was  the  year  of  Brooks's  first  Salpa  paper,  and  of  his  paper  on  pangenesis. 
Cope  explicitly  stated  that  the  law  of  natural  selection  was  now  generally 
accepted,  and  the  then  librarian  of  this  academy,  Louis  Elsberg,  submitted 
his  paper  on  the  plastidule  hypothesis,  as  nonchalantly  as  though  he  were 
discussing  the  lingual  ribbon. 

It  was  under  these  really  blessed  conditions  that  the  American  Asso- 
ciation met  in  Buffalo  and  listened  to  a  vice-presidential  address  fully  worthy 
the  title  of  the  organization.  Edward  S.  Morse  had  demonstrated  his 
ability  as  an  investigator  in  his  paper  of  1872,  already  mentioned,  but  the 
simple,  straightforward,  patient  and  kindly  manner  in  which  he  addressed 
his  audience  in  1S7G,  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  scanned  the  work  of 


40  ANNALS  NEW  YORK  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

others,  the  fairness  with  which  he  acknowledged  the  value  of  their  results, 
and  his  concluding  passages,  in  which  he  indicated  the  important  bearing 
that  the  theories  of  descent  had  upon  the  social  problems  of  the  day,  render 
his  address  a  fit  conclusion  of  a  distinct  epoch  in  the  history  of  American 
science. 

Since  1876,  practically  every  zoological  worker  has  sought  to  make 
some  contribution  that  might  strengthen  his  faith  in  a  rational  evolution  of 
organic  life  and  activities.  It  may  be  that  such  contributions  will  prove 
insufficient.  It  may  be  that  Darwinism  as  a  thing  will  ultimately  fail  of 
proof,  but  to  those  in  the  future  who  may  inquire  for  the  reason  for  these 
exercises  and  for  the  erection  of  this  monument,  Darwinism  as  a  method 
will  ever  be  a  sufficient  reply. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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